Last press of 2011

Atlas Peak cabernet sauvignon is in the press today.

Slow Food Austin considers Rockroom wines

Rockroom and Greenling teamed up to present wines to the Slow Food Austin group as we discussed the various aspects of sustainably produced wines. From Rockroom we sipped an "experimental" chardonnay that was 100% natural processed (nothing added to the fresh-pressed juice as it fermented all on its own with no added sulfites and it was bottled unfined and unfiltered), then we sampled the 2007 La Encantada pinot noir made from organically grown grapes, and finally we tried another experimental wine: a 2005 cabernet sauvignon produced from grapes grown just west of Austin near Hamilton Pool. Greenling supplied some wines produced from organically grown grapes and there was some great discussion by the 30 or so foodies in attendance. I wonder though, did we resolve in any way the questions of what wines can we as a Slow Food community consume in Texas? Is it really time to start mead production in earnest?

Howell Mountain crush

Today our Napa cab was picked and hauled down from Howell Mountain for winemaking in San Francisco. We hand sorted the clusters and then sorted berries on a shaker table after destemming to pull out any fruit that was over or under the ripeness we are looking for.

Westlake's only California winery

Today was crush for some very unique California cabernet as Cross Creek vineyards owner Richard Schwartz airlifted his Sonoma cab picked yesterday into Austin for crush today. Family and friends turned out for gourmet snacks, grape destemming and a fun sampling of vintages back to 1999. Here is Dave from The Grove taking his turn at the hand destemmer. Good times as the 2009 grapes look nicely ripened and prior vintages are tasting impressive. Standouts were the 2000 and 2004 and a 2007 barrel sample shows promise with some time for tannins to soften. There will soon be a way to try Richard's grapes in action as Spann Vineyards has done a 2007 Cross Creek Vineyard designated wine so watch for that. Maybe at The Grove?

WOW Club Seghesio

Wine of the week this week is well known Seghesio but not the zinfandel you would expect. As a member if their wine club we get occasional shipments of their awesome zins of course, but this 05 Alexander Valley cab was included in a Spring shipment. A nice surprise wine that just goes to club members and winery visitors. Clubs are fun that way. Hmmmm - maybe Rockroom needs a club.....

Tasting in good company

The wine of the week this week is one you will not find on the store shelf and probably not on the wine list of your favorite steakhouse. It is the Lail Bluebrint 2005 cabernet. A luscious big "cult" cab with demand far exceeding supply, this magnum was consumed as part of a tasting that Rockroom participated in about an hour west of Austin overlooking beautiful Lake LBJ. A hundred or so folks turned out to try this wine, along with our own 07 chardonnay and 07 Bohemian pinot and a few other treats. We also discussed the idea of a restaurant on the site to take advantage of the great views. I like the idea and saw a lot of enthusiasm among the folks attending. Could it really happen that we could get a taste of the Tuscan experience this close to home?

2007 Cabernet bottled

We had a great day bottling the Howell Mountain cab today. The label for 2007 features a painting by Austin artist Nancy Hoover as our first cabernet art label. With the wine bottled now comes the hard part: waiting for the release!

start the presses

Today we pressed Napa cabernet sauvignon to barrel. Flavors were nice and full with an added bonus of good acidity given the somewhat early harvest. Tannins were relatively soft for this Howell Mountain vineyard as cab from 1000 ft. altitude can be a bit aggressive. We are using Sylvain and Taransaud barrels with tight grained French oak so will watch for subtle oak infusion over the next 18 months or so. This is our first pressing of the year so we are off to a great start!

08 Napa cab is born!

Harvest is well underway with heat spikes in several spots pushing grapes to ripeness a week or two earlier than last year. This means our Napa cabernet is already happily fermenting away. These grapes came in very clean and the fermentation is going well so we will probably extend maceration (fancy word meaning sit there with the skins and juice all together) to get the full wow out of this super-premium Howell Mountain fruit. Then it's pressin' time into French oak barrels for that important 2 year nap!

06 Napa cab bottles

The last of the 2006 rockroom custom wines goes to bottle today. Hurray! Pete made the bottling line hum and we knocked it out in an hour or so. And now, after waiting 20 months or so since harvest, we wait some more. After a few months settling down in the bottle the hard edges will ease up and we should have a very nice food-friendly Napa cab. The predominant character in this wine comes from Howell Mountain fruit selected from 2 vineyard blocks with about a 5% dash of lush fruit-forward merlot and a similar dash of deep dark malbec rounding it out.

07 barrel samples ready to taste

The 2007 wines are ready for tasting! I recently brought chardonnay, syrah and cabernet samples so we can monitor progress in our most recent barrels. Certainly not finished wine but fun to try as we watch the evolution. Hope to see you in the rockroom Austin headquarters this week for a sniff, swirl and sip.

blending fun

This week I got a chance to do some experiments with master blender Kian Tavakoli on our 2006 Napa cabernet sauvignon. Staying with 100% Napa wines it was amazing how small dabs of a different cab or malbec can punch it up. Our favorite by a long shot was a small addition of a Napa benchland cab (remember our base wine is Howell Mountain) and a tiny dab of Malbec from Coombsville (far southern Napa Valley). The blend will continue to barrel age and could even see more blending later.

One by one the rockroom vineyards are being harvested here in California. Hein Vineyard pinot noir was first as it came in last week on September 25th. Fermentation is going great and I think we are looking at a very good year for Anderson Valley. Bohemian Vineyard pinot noir, new for us this year, came in yesterday (October 4th). Little clusters with tiny tiny berries, I am very excited about this wine. Our wine will be a mix of Dijon grape clones 115 and 777 with a little bit of 667. The vineyard, just outside the tiny town of Freestone, was 36 degrees the morning of harvest and our hands were getting numb sorting grapes - this is one chilly site! As appelations go, this is much more of a Sonoma Coast climate than Russian River Valley, the designation that this vineyard carries. Another sorting yesterday was for a bit of a stealth project - a rockroom barrel collaboration on a single barrel of super-premium Napa cabernet sauvignon. But hey, if I tell you about it here, it won't be a stealth project any more!

2007 wine planning

On behalf of you the co-op faithful, David P and I took up the grueling task of sitting down with our friends at the custom crush to plan for our 2007 wines. The focus yesterday was cabernet and with verasion starting in the California vineyards we need to get plans in order for the coming fall harvest. We are repeating Ink Grade cab for 07 and will make a few tweaks based on lessons learned in 06. Stay tuned for news of another cab we will do for 07 - in stealth mode now, but indications are it could be the biggest rockroom wine yet...

On the scene report as White Hawk syrah gets crushed

The following is David's hands-on report from Saturday where he was on location to sort our White Hawk syrah:

Report from sorting white hawk syrah: white hawk first, but had the opportunity to taste inkgrade and hein pinot for this year, all are early and in barrel, so just some impressions, and for those of you who I don't know well, had Jlin to confirm.

White hawk fruit was very clean, but a bit late picking. Having said that, acidulating is easy, and it is ideal to let those grapes hang a bit, because you can never replicate what is 'earned' in the vineyard by getting some more hang time with the clusters. Tasting the fruit...about every fourth cluster was peppery, and we replaced lots of thepre-sorted fruit with browner stems for the whole-cluster component. Still, whole cluster this year is 20% at most, which is fine for the fruit nature gave us...opulent, refined, ultra-aromatic fruit...hints of spice, pepper, but most delicate and important for syrah, floral elements....who didn't as a kid pull off a honeysuckle flower and 'sip' it! That is one of many components our '06 syrah has. Better yet, we got (twist an arm) pulled to the numerous barrel rooms and tried all sorts of 2005-vintage White Hawk Syrah, and I must say the formula rockroom will use this year was the best of what we barrel tasted from 2005...come on out and try it yourself if you don't believe! The best of class was 25% whole cluster, 25% new oak (zebra barrel, recooped with staves so ratio is 25% new French oak...those guys in Sebastapol are forward thinking), which exhibits fruit and nature, which in '06, imho will be stellar, and not oak bits, which are easily overdone.

We also tasted through the 2006 Hein Pinot and Inkgrade cab. In order, here is the progress report: Hein-damn, must be better than last year...why? been in barrel a month, so fully fermented but still has 9 months to pick up character-I tasted stawberry preserves, and loads of cranberry, the whole-berry variety you find when you're lucky. This differs from the '05 rockroom Hein in magnitude....the '05, if any are Burgundy fans, is Anderson Valley*read cool climate*, and is oppulent and pretty, with ultra-floral notes. The '06 will be that, if barrel samples hold true, just more preserved fruit qualities, so look for both, and try them side by side. Next, Inkgrade. Do you know how hard it is to find a cabernet with chocolate/cocoa notes? tough to do with a young one, and that is EXACTLY what Inkgrade is yielding this year so far. This is an inaugural year for availability of Inkgrade fruit, and thank goodness we jumped on it. Scott C. was all over this one, as he was out here to meet the fruit, and since the cab came from 2 VERY distinct blocks, both good but one higher altitude with more sun, I think we got the best ratio of fruit, and damn it's good. Inkgrade just finished malo, and has a complexity and flavor, so far, which easily tops your favorite Napa cab if you are looking for something aside from ultra-toasted, oaky cab. Nothing wrong with that if that's your Parker preference, but this is less oaked, and meant to be so because it shows what nature gave us this year. I like 'oaked' too, but this exhibits real varietal character, and with well treated *thank you Scott* Howell Mountain fruit, chocolate/cocoa notes get to show themselves. It's going to be a yummy cab, gang.

That's it from the source, and realize that is mostly one pallette, all opinions stated are mine, not necessarily from JLin, our resident sommelier, who was there too, and sure she'll have her say as time permits, but think we were of a mind for basic impressions. Rockroom wineauxs, this year is looking good across the board, so pay attention!

Ink Grade Cab "scratch-n-sniff" data sheet

There is a saying that "Great wines are made in the vineyard", but most great wines also have a data sheet like this showing all of the steps taken in the winery to ensure they get to the finish line in the best shape possible. Various additions of chemicals, yeast and yeast nutrients as well as temperature controls and punchdowns or pumpovers to keep juice and skins mingling all add up to make contributions to final wine quality. Based on this early tasting I would say the effort has paid off!

Inky!

Our Ink Grade Vineyard cab was pressed last night and it is, well, inky. Great color and nice tannins . Most promising of all though are the subtle aromas and flavors of spice, cedar and cassis - just some of the unique character we were hoping for with this Howell Mountain fruit. What will it be Christmas 08 when you pop it open with a slab of prime rib? We will see...

Ink Grade cab is in

Our Napa Ink Grade cab is on its way to becoming wine! David P. sorts grapes here as we took fruit from 2 blocks - 70% G1 which was very ripe with some clusters showing slight raisining, and the rest F4 which had brighter acidity and cleaner fruit. The idea is that the 70/30 mix will have big, ripe flavors , plus enough structure to age a bit and/or enjoy with a steak.

Ink Grade Cabernet happens Oct 2nd

Just worked out the schedule on our Ink Grade Cabernet Sauvignon: picking is October 2nd and they will drive the grapes down for destemming which we will do at 7pm. That is pacific time so 9pm here in TX. IF YOU WANT TO CHECK IT OUT... Assuming it is working check out the CrushCam (go the the custom crush website and click the Crushcam link) and watch the fun as we sort grapes before they run through the destemmer.

Harvest 2006 Status

The picking has begun! The growers are reporting in and here are a few harvest stats:
pinot gris (or pinot grigio if you prefer Italian) was harvested Monday 9/11 at 20.1 Brix (percent sugar by weight) and acidity of 8.2 g/l at pH=3.51. Finished with a little residual sugar this should be a nice low-alcohol quaffer to beat the heat next summer. Our Napa sauvignon blanc was picked the same day at 22.2 Brix and 7 g/l acid at pH of 3.3. We will do it bone dry and it will be a great refresher to pair with grilled shrimp next summer.

Meanwhile our InkGrade cabernet sauvignon (that is the photo) is already at 24.5 Brix at 7 g/l acid and pH 3.34. Should harvest by the end of September. The Hein pinot noir will be ready a week or two after that (two weeks later than last year). Bottom line is that California harvesting is bunching up a bit and could have shades of 2004 when fruit came in all at once.