Rebel Rose

Ditto all of the above. Be sure to cover the cases with clothes or blankets. Transport the bottles punt down and invert them when you get home. Allow them to settle before attempting to drink them. They'll be fine!

Actually, the first book I'd like to recommend is Wine and War -- I thought it would be a dusty read, but it turned out to be a real page turner with lots of humorous moments. I think you'll enjoy your favorite wines even more when you read about the vineyards being bombed and smashed by tanks; men, men, men and horses conscripted; Nazis pouring motor oil into full barriques, and marking them for confiscation as fuel; and vignerons building clandestine stills to produce copper sulfate. I've loaned the book out repeatedly, and it finally hasn't come back . . . Another loaner that hasn't returned is God is My Broker, by Christopher Buckley. A stock broker joins a monastery with a vineyard and winery, but the monks are still making wine in old cement tanks with rusted plumbing. The Pope's annual case of wine, which contains mysterious orange specks, makes him deathly ill, and in a fury he cuts off the monastery's funding, sparking a hilarious spoof on self-improvement and postive-thinking books. I just love a warped sense of humor. I've actually seen cement wine tanks at some of the old wineries here (eeuuuch) and the abalone farm on the coast near us uses old cement wine tanks to store their harvested seaweed for their expensive snails. (Double eeuuch.) Anyone read these? Any other fun romps to recommend? Here are eGullet commission links to these books on Amazon.com. Wine and War God is My Broker Click here for instructions on how to build an eGullet commission link to books you'd like to recommend.

Hmm, perhaps the early prophets had wives who cook like the ladies in my childhood Baptist church. Charred, dry beef, leathery chicken, tons and tons of hot dogs on white bread, warm, smeary potato salad, jello salad with Kool Whip, served with horrid Folgers coffee (black).

Mmm, mmm, I know you've told us about Diane's talent before . . . can you post pictures occasionally so we can vicariously enjoy her dishes?

The wines sound excellent, but I confess I have trouble concentrating on your wine notes because of the food . . . My eyes keep seeing, chanterelle stuffed ravioli, cauliflower soup with truffle oil, chanterelle stuffed ravioli, cauliflower soup with truffle oil, chanterelle stuffed ravioli, cauliflower soup with truffle oil, chanterelle stuffed ravioli, cauliflower soup with truffle oil . . .

Gosh, this is fun! Thank you for doing a blog during such a busy week, Abra. I'm going to second (third? tenth?) all the questions asked so far. And how do you maintain the energy to do all these things??? I'll be visiting my family in western Washington later this week, and your description of a blackberry breeze is just wonderful. I'm going to eat myself silly when I get to my parents' berry gardens. One for the bowl, one for me . . . Do you get plenty of fresh seafood there? I remember when I lived on Orcas Island we could sail up to the shrimp boats, and I'd stand with one foot on our gunnel and one on theirs, hand them two bucks, and they'd give me a half-gallon milk carton box filled to the brim with parboiled shrimp fresh from the ocean. Mmm, mmm, shrimp, fresh baked bread, and a little white wine, a sunny day on a sailboat . . . am I getting homesick?

Weeellllll, no, it wasn't many tasters--it was the owners, winemakers and staff of Tablas Creek. However, they are an international group, primarily British and French, so if they say the Condrieu wines were confused with Californian then I believe that indeed there's a little stylistic cross-over there. Personally, I think of French viognier as a sort of Grace Kelly wine, and American viognier as Rachel MacLish. Even Jancis Robinson refers to viognier as a "muscular white wine." ! I do agree that we need to refine our viticultural awareness in California regarding viognier. The Hansen Vineyard is very black, volcanic soil (unusual in our area) and produces a creamy, more balanced viognier than other vineyards we've seen so far. Other soils also produce great viogniers here, but we are probably picking too late. More experimentation needed. Mat Garretson is the authority on this, but I have heard that at one point in the last few decades there were only 10 hectares of viognier left in France, and not a hell of a lot planted in California. Ten years ago I couldn't interest visitors in tasting it because it sounded like a German opera and it sure as hell didn't taste like chardonnay. Personally, I have aspirations to look like Rachel MacLish, therefore I am committed to drinking a lot of California viognier!

As usual, Katie is right on the money. Over-oaking is a common industry practice used to hide faults in a wine. Oak additives and alternatives are also used by large producers to increase cost effectiveness and efficiency. Here's the link to World Cooperage's oak alternatives, which could be fun to check out. Be sure to look up oak powder, which is supposed to be added to the fruit in the crusher to "remove vegetal characters" and add tannin. The Oak Stix are crisscrossing barrel inserts, but they only come in 'house' toast--as opposed to medium or heavy toast.

Michael, welcome! Well, welcome to posting, anyway! Your writeup is great! Very descriptive and mouthwatering. I agree that a NZ Sauvignon Blanc is just the ticket in August, but I'm not at all familiar with Spy Valley, so thanks for posting this! I hope you'll pitch in more often!

This sounds like a joke . . . let's see . . . A chef, a writer, an engineer, and uh, a kendo expert, had a bottle of wine and no opener . . .

I find the ever-mighty and versatile pen works just fine. If you want to save what's left in the bottle, just invert a coffee cup over it. Use glass or ceramic, though, and not anything plastic or metallic. Plastic and foil impart a weird smell.

Thank you, everyone. Will keep you posted regarding harvest.

Brad, thank you for your comments! I agree the Fralich is over the top, very cooked melon. We decided during harvest last year not to buy any more of Harry Fralich's fruit, although we have featured his vineyard for seven years running. He has good vintages and bad, whereas Hansen is always consistent. We will also be getting viognier and roussanne from Judy Starr, Starr Ranch, this year, and we're anticipating high quality from this young vineyard. I was pretty sure you'd like the Alban. John Alban sets the bar for Rhones in the Central Coast.

Hathor and Carolyn, here you go: Only a few Zin clusters are this ripe, and they are all on the south side of the bushes. Our vineyard has east-west rows, and the summer sun hangs lopsided to the south so these berries get more sun exposure. You can see that this cluster is loose and uneven due to the uneven pollination set during our windy spring. By the time this cluster is fully ripe, these little berries will be shriveled and raisiny. A refractometer measures Brix with only a few drops of juice, so to get an accurate sugar reading from a bush or cluster, we drop them into bucket, moosh 'em up together, and then take a sugar reading. If the uneven clusters have too many raisins, or the pips are unripe, they'll be left behind. Here's a single purple berry on the shady north side of another bush. This is the kind of cluster we're looking for--small and uniform, although you can see that it also has unpollinated spots. We still have tons of purely green clusters, though. The Zin has a long way to go, but our viognier growers are keeping a close eye on the fruit.

Katie, your response is perfect (and much more gracious than mine)! While there have been some well-written articles on emerging women winemakers, and the challenges they have overcome, so many of these pieces are merely fluff, and focus solely on a woman's sensitive palate, as if that alone accounts for their success. Since I see first hand how hard these women work, and the insults, sarcasm and condescension they often endure, I'm afraid I get a burr under my saddle easily on this topic. ::sigh::

Welcome, Frost. Your comments on oxygen dovetail with an interesting article in this month's Practical Winery & Vineyard, by Tyson Stelzer, author of Screwed for good? The case for screwcaps on red wines. The gist of the article is that a number of studies performed since the 1960s indicate that while screwcaps completely eliminate the possibility of cork taint from TCA, the barrier to oxygen could also be extremely beneficial, resulting in wines with incredible youthfulness and longevity. Stelzer quotes a number of French and Australian producers who support the use of screwcaps, although there are still detractors who feel the studies performed to date are incomplete. The ongoing argument seems to be whether oxygen ingress is needed for the proper development of wine. Several studies have been done and confirmed that show wine will develop, slightly, without additional air. In non-aerobic aging conditions, the tannins and acids drop out, but fruit character remains unchanged. High quality corks effectively eliminate most and perhaps all additional air, so a screwcap is essentially the same as a high quality cork, without the risk of TCA. Rieslings have done very well with Stelvin closures, but many winemakers still claim that for reds, especially, reductive changes are not enough. However, Peter Wall, past director of Yalumba, says "True wine scientists know that bottle development is a reductive, not an oxidative process. It's about time the truth was told." At the same time, proponents of the no-oxygen-necessary camp are also talking about adding micro-oxygenation during bottling, to ensure that the wines are bottled with sufficient oxygen to support aerobic change.

As harvest is just around the corner, I've decided that our August topic should be harvest. This piece does not answer any of the technical viticultural and enological decisions facing us in the next few months, but I hope you will ask away! Be sure to check Carolyn Tillie's Wineblog frequently to enjoy the action at Gundlach-Bundschu. In late summer, there is a moment in vineyards known as "veraison," which translates roughly as "moment of truth." It is the moment when grapes begin to turn from hard, green beads into sweet, plump fruit. From that moment until harvest the vineyards are at their most vulnerable. The hazards of the early season—heavy rains, late frosts—are minor compared to the dangers stalking the last few weeks of every vintage. Hordes of deer and clouds of birds descending on tender fruit can wipe out an entire harvest in a few days. Late season heat ripens grapes too quickly, robbing them of flavor. A lack of heat delays harvest into late fall, when freezing nights will turn grapes into tasteless mush. Late season rains swell grapes with water, breaking the skins and infecting entire clusters with mold. During these last few weeks of summer, winemakers are in the vineyards, looking at the clusters, crushing grapes between their fingers, tasting the fruit. The winemaker's phone rings unanswered, mail piles up in messy stacks, and deadlines are missed. In the winery itself, cellarmen spend weeks draining barrels and tanks of previous vintages, bottling and labeling wine and shipping it out, cleaning tanks, barrels and equipment. Like the unveiling of a statue, cloth covers are pulled off the crusher and the press, and the huge machines are rolled outside, cleaned, and tested. Truck-size scales are pulled out of storage, assembled and calibrated to receive incoming fruit. But to those of us who have been through this before, these busy weeks seem quiet, sounds seem muted. The vineyards are full, leafy, and heavy with fruit. Vines sag over their trellis system and trail on the ground. Heat waves dance over the vines and an occasional breeze lifts aluminum strips which are meant to frighten birds. In the winery itself, empty tanks stand with their doors hanging open. Barrels are turned upside down in their racks and the whole winery has a strangely hollow feeling. Like survivors of a storm who smell another forming, we move through our preparations quickly with our minds focused on the horizon of late summer, waiting as the rising sugars and flavor of the vineyard slowly escalate. All of this activity is only preparation for the season we call "crush." "Crush" is winery slang for the harvest season—for more than one reason. The long hours; tedious, mind-numbing work; and the crises of harvest are another reason for the name. But the excitement level is high, and everyone works side by side. During the harvest season, which is usually late August to late October, you will find winemakers working alongside cellarmen—inside tanks, shoveling grape skins, driving forklifts, and tasting incoming fruit. In spite of the physical demands of the season, there is a magical, energizing quality about it. As one winemaker put it, "I live for crush. As far as I'm concerned, the rest of the year is just preparation for this." Cellarmen work late into the night. Steam rising from bins of warm fruit mingles with exhaust from the forklifts, creating eerie clouds under halogen lamps. Pallets of imported beer are parked in the cellar for thirsty workers. And then there are the crises of crush: truck-trailers full of fruit tipped over, tank doors torn off by misdirected forklifts, overflowing tanks, full barrels dropped off forklifts—wine literally flowing everywhere. The hours are long and brutal, and the stakes are high. Incoming fruit must be processed while it is still fresh and cool. Grapes will be turned away for lack of quality; other loads will be high quality but perhaps low on tonnage, leaving the winemaker wondering how he will make up the difference. Many decisions on winemaking techniques have been made ahead of time, but this is the moment of truth, too-late-to-turn-back, so frenetic winery activity takes on the feel of high stakes poker. As fast as one lot is crushed, put into fermenters and inoculated with yeast, more fruit is coming in. Fermenting lots must be babysat, kept at the right temperature, tested for dryness, moved into barrels. Fermenting wine must be pumped over, or punched down, much like punching down rising bread dough. Grape skins float to the top in a fermenter, creating a sticky cap at least a foot thick, every inch of which must be patiently pressed down into the wine with a tool that looks like a hoe. Tanks, bins, and barrels are constantly being cleaned—hoses run nonstop and so do the winery workers. Exhausted cellarmen will go home for a few hours of sleep, and dream about falling into the press, dying comfortably on a soft bed of sticky grapes, or dream of being locked inside a tank, hammering for rescue. But nothing can exhaust this thread of excitement. While others will examine our wines in the future in terms of 'vintage,' this is when it happens--when the decisions are made and alliances formed. From dormancy through pruning, and after all the planning, barrel orders, storage plans, promises, contracts—this is the all-too-brief moment of vintage.

I'm sorry, GG, please excuse me while I run to the bathroom and barf . . . Ah, I'm all better now. Isn't that just sweet? We're mothers and cooks, and if we bat our eyes just so we'll get the help we need in the vineyard . . ." To answer your question, I would have to say no, American women winemakers are not like that! (Thank you, God.) Signe Zoller and Heidi Changala come to mind instantly. I know both women personally, and while they both have awesome palates, as do their male counterparts, they are also meticulous, aware, informed, mechanically adept, physically fit, highly intelligent, assertive and respected in their industry. Whew. I feel better now.

I recommend that you post pictures. Edited to add a very happy face.

Mmm, you've got several of my favorite Pinots on that list! I'd save the orange juice for last, make the marinade, stick my finger in, and then decide, while dribbling the oj in to taste. With the star anise, it sounds like maybe a deeper Pinot, but oj can have an incredibly brightening effect. Sounds like an interesting marinade for pork!

Eh, sad but true. You're totally right. I don't think about those methods normally, because (ssh) when Dover Dan and I hear about someone using these expensive methods of wine manipulation, our reaction is, "What the hell?" It's inconceivable to us that someone would actually do that to a wine, much less pay for it. It's so easy to screw up a wine for free. I guess that's the difference between a 'vintner' and a 'producer'.

You got it. Bordeaux has the opposite problem in terms of balance. Their cooler growing season postpones sugar development, so getting the grapes ripe is a huge challenge. That's why they practice cepage. They reserve part of their best vintages as insurance against green vintages, when the grapes are not adequately ripe or developed. Then they blend the good vintage into the less-than-perfect one to create a consistent wine. Their wines are amazing, and I think it adds to the enjoyment of a Bordeaux to really appreciate the challenges the vignerons face in creating them!

This is a topic that has been oft discussed in our region. Every growing region has its advantages and challenges. Growers here love the soils, and the long, warm growing season with a nice 50 degree diurnal swing. Late frosts are rare, hailstorms rarer, no fog to contend with--we don't have the crop-destroying challenges of other areas. Our challenge is that we do have long, warm growing days and very cool nights (50 degrees), so the grapes achieve sugar ripeness slightly ahead of pigment, flavor development, and toasty pips. In order to pick at optimum flavor, we wait a little longer than other regions--resulting in wines with higher alcohol, yes, and also much more intense flavor due to the longer 'hang time.' You see, the little buggers do not necessarily develop evenly, and in any area, it's a huge challenge for growers to keep the grapes on track, so that sugar, pigment, flavor and pips are all ripening on schedule. (Which is why they say 90% of a good wine is made in the vineyard. That's because 90% of the work and emotional stress happens in the vineyard!!!) Soil deficiencies, vine diseases, sucking pests, drought, rainy seasons, generally affect one or two factors, throwing the whole vine off balance. Here's what vintners look for: Sugar--with practice you can guess Brix by tasting. Easy. Vintners want to pick at 22-24 (resulting alcohol will be roughly half of the Brix), but must also evaluate the grapes for the following . . . Pigment--it's a really good sign when the weight of the grapes in the picking bin results in some dark, juicy leakage at the bottom. When you squeeze a cluster, does your hand turn purple? Sometimes the grapes look ripe, but just don't release much color. How thick is the skin? We want thick, purple skins, but not tough or fibrous. Flavor--do the grapes have recognizable varietal character? Does the acid seem out of whack with the sugar? Pips--the seeds should be fat, brown and toasty. They should burst happily between your teeth and taste like popcorn. Not green. So you see, it's a fine balancing act. Vintners do not intentionally "jack up" the alcohol or concentration or tannin. Their goal is to bring the fruit in when everything is in perfect balance, and keep it that way through the vintning process. It's hard to keep everything in balance. We don't always suceed, but when we do, mmm mmm!

Good for you! I love it when someone jiggles the boat.

But what is true varietal character? And who decides? How can you take terroir out of the equation entirely? I'm sure one response is that certain terroir contributes to true varietal character, but that's having it both ways IMO. What, me? An opinion? God forbid. This is an interesting question, and you're right, it would make an interesting thread in its own right. I'm not sure I have an answer, even, but I do know what I've been taught to look for. I think of the core flavors of each varietal as being the basic varietal character. I don't really think of terroir as affecting that much--in fact, I believe it shouldn't--but I do believe that terroir affects the expression of varietal character, so they go hand in hand. Varietal character is the little black dress, terroir is the choice of shoe--a little black dress with ballet flats or with fu-me shoes. Elegance and restraint vs. sensuality and daring. Everything else is an accessory. Some accessories are magic, and some just don't work at all. So, to bring it back to zinfandel, there are conservative zins, and there are Mae West zins, and part of the allure for zinfanatics is the extreme versatility of this grape, but I feel that all zins should have a strong raspberry/black pepper profile first. Without that, it might be a nice wine, but I would think it's not varietally accurate. After that, I can usually guess whether the wine came from a cooler or warmer climate, whether it's dryfarmed or not, and sometimes the precise region, based on the terroir and winemaking style of that region. That's where the whole terroir thing gets really confusing, because winemakers in a particular region tend to gravitate toward certain techniques that they find best expresses their fruit--and since 90% of a wine's quality is based on the vineyard, the winemaking style is often the most successful menu of methods for dealing with a particular terrain's challenges. I like the word 'terroir' though, and my favorite definitions place man squarely inside the concept, not separated from the sun and soil, but part of the whole picture. I recently blind tasted 23 syrahs, and was disappointed to find that only five in the group really stood up and shouted, "I am a Syrah!" Most lacked the bacon, licorice, blueberry profile that I look for from syrah, and I felt they were too cab-like. Eh, I forgot about the viognier. It's usually high, but not THAT high. Oh well, I think I've drunk 1/3 of our inventory so it won't be around long enough to matter.