Rebel Rose

We've enjoyed some bountiful gifts this past week. Thank you to Ted and Nancy Commerdinger for the incredible tomato sauces and five-pepper sauce! The basket below was delivered by Kate Dubost from her garden. The basket weighed 35 pounds! I did some consulting work for Dubost Family Winery and instead of a fee, I will be treated to garden produce, their ranch olive oil (very floral), and some cuts of spring lamb. Dan groused about my taking on extra projects, but he was first to dig into the basket.

Preharvest QUIZ! How many articles in the photo below do you recognize? And which one do you think is the most important?

Jerry Bogue, below, delivered a few tons of petite syrah from his Rancho Verano Vineyard on Saturday--first fruit of the season. The fruit is lifted by a forklift and dumped into a small crusher/destemmer. A large screw in the funnel-shaped top of the crusher pushes the clusters to the left end of the machine, where it drops into a spinning horizontal sleeve with one-inch holes , which separates the stems from the berries. The berries are lightly macerated (crushed) and drop directly into a bin below, while the spinning sleeve spits the stems out to the right.

This sounds so good I looked it up on wine-searcher . . . but only found one store in Florida carrying it! Bummer. Where did you get it?

Here's the challenge: 1. To prepare a dish that you have never attempted before. It may be from a recipe, adapted from a recipe, or a totally new creation. It may be an appetizer, side, main, or dessert course. I recommend that we each choose a locally produced artisan food as a main ingredient. 2. To serve a wine you have never tried before with your new dish. The wine may be simply from a new producer, but I encourage everybody to seek out a new varietal and new appellations. Post your ideas here, and ask for advice. Then let's get together after the meal and compare notes. Comments?

Harvest begins today, with petit sirah from Bogue Vineyard. Pictures to follow. Fruit is scheduled for every day of the coming week, and indeed, it is highly unusual for Dan to crush fruit on a Saturday, as the equipment is right next to the tasting room and he worries about curious visitors stumbling around the equipment while he's working. Most of the time people stand off to the side and just ask questions, but you do get the occasional hyperactive adult who wants to snatch tools out of your hand, or unsupervised kids playing tag and chasing the cats around a moving forklift. We are about to be slammed with fruit, and may finish the entire harvest tonnage in a week to ten days. Although online reports elsewhere rave about the quality of this year's fruit, we're not seeing this vintage as one of overall high quality. It will be what we call a "selective" year. Not as impossible as 2000, more in line with the difficult-to-work-with 2002, not as easy and impressive as 2001 and 2003. The long, wet spring caused a lot of "shatter" in the clusters during bloom, resulting in many small unfertilized berries that remain tiny and green--if these "shot berries" adhere to the stems and are removed by the destemmer, the remaining fruit looks really, really good. Larger shot berries that pop off and into the crushed fruit will lend the resulting must an unfortunate green tannin character, and will affect fruit balance. In addition, a cool summer with a few extreme heat spikes has not lent itself to even ripening. Extreme heat does not ripen fruit--when the temperature exceeds about 88 degrees, vines shut down; resulting in berries that lose moisture content (thereby falsely increasing sugar readings), but without proper vine metabolism, the fruit is not really ripening. However, after the unfortunate El Nino and La Nina vintages, most growers here have become extremely proactive. Growers dropped fruit in early summer to prevent the spread of mildew and provide more wind space between clusters, and growers have been dropping fruit again in late summer to ensure that the remaining crop load will ripen in the case of a cool autumn. Nona Vineyard spent $7,000 on 16 acres just dropping part of their crop on the ground. Grenache from Alto Pomar will come in at 50% of normal due to spring thinning. After discussions with other local winemakers who are also seeing irregularities, Dan has decided to bring in less than half our usual production. As we are selling all the wine we make, and some releases sell out in five months, you can imagine my dismay. The remaining fruit will be very high quality, but there will be very little of it, here at least! If October is steady and warm, Dan may decide to bring in some later lots. At any rate, I hope it will make for an interesting discussion here, and I invite everyone to ask questions, or hop in with their own vintage reports and observations.

Link to the San Luis Obispo Tribune Who's in? (Or virtually in . . .) What would you make? What would you call your wine?

Wow.

All Italians, huh? Bill, do you think the Wine Spectator is right and that sangiovese in California is a "failed experiment"? If so, why?

Cabernet and Bordeaux blends, whether produced in France, the US, or elsewhere, are often considered the epitome of enological classicism. (Some would argue that Burgundies are the truest, most delicate expression of terroir and the vintner's art, but we'll get to them later . . .) What do you look for in a cabernet sauvignon or cab blend? Conservative flavors of cherry, cassis, leather and pencil lead? A little herb? Some earthiness or steel? Personally, I am bored by wines--even expensive, sought after wines--with the conservative profile. Makes me think of grandma's cherry pie while doing homework--pretty tame. I like cabernets that have something just a little exotic and dangerous about them. In fact, one day after reading the Wine Spectator cab scores I thought to myself, "they all sound like cherry pie." Then I thought, "why should cherry pie be that boring?" So I made a cherry pie inspired by my love of spicy cabs--a pie with a Parmesan and black pepper crust. Now that's a good pie! Because I'm ITB, I won't list individual producers that I like or don't like, but I encourage you to give examples of your favorites or disappointments. What's your style? Maybe the classic profile is a truer expression of the cabernet/terroir relationship. But what if a California cab could be so much more? Different, and maybe better grown in California, or Washington, or Uruguay? (Disclosure: we do not produce a lot of cabernet, so I am asking this as an individual, and perhaps as a woman. My taste, and our production, runs more to zins and Rhones.)

Well, the weather reports threatened a 50% chance of rain and thunderstorms beginning last night. But it never happened. I was awake and looking out the window at 2 am to clear, starry skies, cricketsong by the thousands, owls hooting, foxes and coyotes yipping. This morning the skies are crystal blue and the air is slightly crisp. A predicted heat spike is moving away and apparently temperatures will be our usual cool mornings and 80-85 afternoons. Our hilltop to the west of Paso proper gets lots of wind and cooler air in the afternoons. With the temperatures cooling down and days growing shorter, the maturation rate of the fruit will slow down. Dan made the comment this morning that this harvest will be pretty much back to normal in terms of scheduling. Last year, we harvested everything in September--we had no fruit in October. Most years, the fruit comes in from early September through October. This will be a low tonnage year as many growers dropped fruit early in the season to prevent or offset mildew during the rainy spring, and many growers are dropping unripe fruit again now as the vines respond to the shortening days by shutting down--dropping fruit will help ensure that nearly ripe clusters ripen fully. In the meantime, the storm that was supposed to start here is still rotating northward, and there's still a chance for thunderstorms and possibly hail in Napa. Personally, I think the storm will stay mostly offshore, and they'll just get a brief shower or two.

Chris, what was your group looking for in syrah? Sorry, maybe you're going to post detailed notes later . . . just wondering.

10 reasons wine beats beer (and vice versa)

In the parlance of Wine Blogging Wednesday, "new new" means non-West Coast.

Those of us with wine or food blogs should check out this fun activity, Wine Blogging Wednesday, here at the LENNDEVOURS wine blog. I'm thinking about joining in myself. Anyone else here with a ongoing blog who is interested in participating, or has participated?

It's been pleasantly warm here during mid-day, with overcast mornings and downright chilly wee hours. This week's forecast is for a brief, one day heat spike and a thunderstorm. Great. The zin is still a long ways off. Syrah in a week to ten days. The sugar is already there in the syrah, but not the skin and pip development. Viognier in a few days, possibly.

On the Dr. Vino website, an essay by importer Terry Thiese, Why does place-specificity matter?

Well, I guess he really liked the wines, since I have just learned that our own Craig Camp has left Italy to become marketing director for Anne Amie. Shortly after your last visit, yes? How do you like Oregon and working with pinot? And why am I always the last to know these things?

Three weeks since my last post. The syrah is developing good color now, and the berries are starting to soften. As a whole, the clusters do not look quite ready, but they're beginning to get very, very close. First, I look down the row. Most of the clusters are developing to a dark purple, and everything seems to ripening evenly, but each cluster still has a few lavender berries. Next, I taste a few of the riper berries. Mmm, sweet and chewy. Too chewy--the skins are not softening up yet. Opening a berry and examing the pips, I can see that they're beginning to turn brown, but they're just a mottled green, white and brown. Then I split a berry open, pop out the pulp, and taste the pulp and skin separately. The skin is sweeter, and while the pulp has nice acid, it still tastes a little too "green." I'm guessing the overall Brix is about 21-22. This is a refractometer. To use it, you just flip back this little lid, exposing a small window. A few drops of berry juice go onto the window. Ordinarily, we'd take a field sample by picking a representative sample of berries and squishing them up in a baggie, or by selecting clusters from various parts of the vineyard and smashing them up in a bucket. Having failed to bring either a bucket or baggie, I'm just going to pick a really, really plump purple berry to measure, since the point of this particular stroll is to take pictures for eGullet. I discard the berry, leaving just a trace of juice on the window. Close the lid, look through the eyepiece and point the refractometer up to the light. Twenty-FOUR?? HOly shit! Okay, okay, breathe, breathe. It was a really ripe berry. The vineyard is not ready yet. Look at the whole picture, Mary. Whoo. That'll teach me to play around with technology.

Women Spur New Trend in Marketing Hmmm. But the article doesn't say what trend. ::shudder:: So why do you think the population in this forum is overwhelmly male? Not that I'm complaining . . .

Except that every distributor in the U.S. reads his newsletter, as do nearly every wine shop, broker, and sommelier. And yes, they are heavily influenced by scores. Still, I agree with you that he is not the only excellent and influential wine writer out there. Why is Parker singled out for all this vitriol?

Fruit salad dressing. With late summer stonefruits, chopped, mix the wine with a little mirin, rice vinegar, and fresh grated ginger, gently toss, eat and slurp.

I hereby bestow upon you both the title of WineDips (Wine Diplomats). As for levels beyond that, we'll see . . . The next step would be the confidence to start a conversational grass fire . . .

Does anyone have any more information or a link as to what exactly the current restrictions are? I can't imagine that this kind of passion and anger is born out of greed. This seems to me to be the kind of reaction that small farmers would have against having their livelihood threatened. (Then again, the French have been known to bulldoze McDonald's on principle.) Five percent across the board could seriously impact a small, already tightly producing vineyard, while hardly affecting the bottom line of larger growers. By my calculations, the figures listed in the article equate to about 1 ton per acre for Cahors. That can be significant for growers with already limited tons/acre or hl/ha.