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?

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?

Chardonnay 08

Today we racked 2008 chardonnay to keep it moving to clarity by natural settling. Malolactic fermentation is done in the primary chard batch although we have a small "commando" batch that is doing its own thing (native yeasts, etc.) that is still creeping along. A few more months to let things sort out and we should be ready to bottle.

wine for your valentine

We just did a bit of a news flash about a couple specials on rockroom wine for Valentine's Day wine buyers. Wine is such a no-brainer for Val Day and our super sexy food friendly pinot noirs and chardonnay should be on more tables for dinner. Fun thing about niche wines like ours is that gift recipients won't see them on store shelves everywhere so it feels like a unique gift instead of just checkin' off the box with chocolates or roses. Anyway, enough of a ramble and I know I'm mostly preaching to the choir on this one!

Austin ferments

Our co-operative wines for 2008 are fermenting along nicely and the sangiovese and zinfandel (pictured here foaming like mad during punchdown) will be ready to press within a week or so. Barrel fermented Carneros chard is just now completely dry and gets a stir daily to move it along the way to smoothing out and gaining complexity. All to say that if you want to see your wine at this early stage of its life you better do it soon!

W.o.w. - shiner anyone?

So in Texas when we talk "shiners" we usually mean beer and usually bock style Shiner Bock beer at that, but in the case of this week's wine of the week it is an unlabeled bottle of wine - a shiner - that happens to hold our own inaugural sparkling wine. The base wine for this was our 2006 Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay and the wine is currently in champagne bottles becoming, we hope, our own tasty blanc-de-blancs. If you have wandered through the storage (or "elevage" as the French would say) caves/warehouses of a decent sparkling wine maker you have seen these shiners by the thousands laying humbly with their bottlecaps on waiting for a year or two or three to allow layers of flavor to develop in that bottle. This is methode champenoise and is the only way to laboriously make decent bubbly. How do you get a sparkler of your very own? Hang with us - we're willing to try making anything! And in this case it is going quite well I would say. Maybe we should pop one of these at the next co-op get together so you can see how good it is getting...

rockroom's white debut - 07 chardonnay

Here it is folks, going into bottle after 9 months in barrel - our Alder Springs Vineyard chardonnay. This wine saw oak by way of previously used French oak to avoid an overdose of barrel influence to this wine as we get to know the vineyard and it's ability to handle oak. Remember these grapes had an extreme hang time going well into November before they were picked from their hillside vineyard way up in Mendocino County and we really want this premium fruit to lead the way on this wine. So far it has a very food-friendly crispness to it with nice citrus and pear aromas and flavors. A couple months to get itself together in the bottle and we should have a great seafood wine come spring 2009. Sorry to make you wait, but we will sell no wine before its time. Hey, that could be a good tagline. Let me check to see if anyone has used it before...

wow - time to break out that chard!

One summer favorite that just screams for a full flavored chardonnay is grilled seafood and veggies. Toss some sliced squash, zucchini, onions and mushrooms in a ziplock with a splash of balsamic vinaigrette and grill along side a slab of fresh salmon (or in this case fresh steelhead trout). Either of the 2006 rockroom co-op chards we made goes great with this simple supper so if you ended up with some, pop that cork! Remember, the wine we made here in Austin is not cold stabilized so if you chill it for more than a few hours you might end up with a bit of tartrate crystalized in the bottom of the bottle - a natural grape byproduct, it is cream of tarter for your next lemon meringe pie!

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.

grapes arrive!

The grapes for our 2007 rockroom winemaking co-operative wines are now in Austin! Two different clones of Carneros pinot noir, 250lbs of primo Russian River Valley zinfandel and enough Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay juice to make a nice little quarter barrel of chard. Moving these grapes toward wine-dom starts today and the weekend will certainly see some key steps take place. Call or email if you want to drop in and see how your wine is starting life!

w.o.w. - chard is ready

Hopefully you have a few bottles of our 2006 Carneros chardonnay bottled just 2 months ago. The wine is already showing nice classic chardonnay character and you really should pop one now so you know how it started out. Sure, age a couple of them but don't miss the chance to try this solid charonnay early. cheers!

Harvest has begun!

It's official - our Alder Springs chardonnay high up in the hills of Mendocino County (that's the vineyard in the photo) will be picked on September 3rd making it the first of our grapes to go to the custom crush in San Francisco. Hurray! I will be zipping out there soon, hopefully as grapes comes in and will keep you posted. Rest assured though, I have worked out detailed winemaking plans with the folks out there so there is no mystery about what to do when our grapes arrive at the crushpad. They have a great crew and have staffed up, added another top-of-the-line Italian membrane press and are ready for the big harvest that lies ahead. All reports I have been getting are that harvest this year is 1) about 2 weeks earlier across California and 2) healthy with no troublesome rain showers (causes mildew and dilutes flavors) or whithering heat (does not give grapes recovery time at night). Bottom line - we are looking good!

bottling the 06 chard

Sunday ended up being bottling day for our co-op 2006 Carneros chardonnay. The second of 3 chard batches for 06, this one is classic Cali with that creamy vanilla caramel thing going on. Yum! This was of course to be expected as this wine was fermented from its raw juice state in a small French oak barrel and stored in that same barrel to pickup some of those expensive and exotic flavors. Labels will get printed soon and then we will have a "label your own" get together, so watch your email for that...

bubbly

Today our rockroom bubbly took a major step toward being uh,... bubbly. Now the base wine here is some of our '06 Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay that a few of us decided to make into our very own blanc de blancs. This was a lower alcohol, higher acidity batch than the stuff that went to bottle a couple weeks back (any of you drinking that yet?). As with champagne, the next step (the tirage), which happened today, was to mix in some sugar, some yeast, a dash of yeast nutrient blend to keep the yeast active and happy, and a little powdered bentonite (clay) to help settle the murk into a clump that can be "disgorged" later - like a year or so from now. So now we are learning about what makes bubbly - hey before you know it we will be sippin' it. And I have a feeling it is going to be tasty...

bottling some coop juice

Bottling went well today and we have some 2006 wines ready and waiting. The pinot gris is a light wine with floral and melon aromas and simple clean flavors. The sauv blanc packs a bit more flavor and tends to citrus like grapefruit and lime with hints of passionfruit and great acidity that should help is play nicely with food. Worked fine for me with some greek dolmas for dinner! Now what can I say about the WhiZ? Beautiful bright pink with hints of cherry and strawberry this is a nice light quaffer. Plenty of flavor and acidity softened with about 1% residual sugar. Finally, the Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay went to bottle with big, rich flavors - the usual apple and pear are in there but with a dose of pineapple and a really long lingering finish. This wine had a brief time in French oak barrel (Radoux medium toast) and it certainly picked up some nice caramel hints.

The pinot gris, sauvignon blanc and WhiZ are ready to drink and will be great summertime chillers. The chard is yummy now but will benefit from at least a few months resting in the bottle to allow some of the complex flavors to integrate. In fact, I expect that this wine will do well with even more age on it. Having said that all these wines have pretty low levels of sulfites and were only lightly filtered so don't expect to leave them in a hot pantry for a year or two. Also, none were cold stablized (c'mon - click the link and read about it!) so they will do best just chilled an hour or two in the fridge right before opening. If you stick em down in the deep celler of your Scottish castle or subject them to several days of fridge temps you should expect to see some tartrate crystals form at the bottom of the bottle. No worries - harmless stuff (cream of tartar) so just pour carefully to avoid that little bit of sediment. And enjoy! - These are the first of our 2006 handmade wines and they turned out really nice!

w.o.w. - more burgundian than burgundy ?

This week Kala hosted (hostessed?) a cozy wedding shower wine tasting in honor of one of our own co-op charter member (congrats Julie H!) and in the mix was a real beauty of a chardonnay. Not to take away from the beauty of the shower attendees, of course, (whew) but this 2005 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars "Karia" chardonnay was put up against a 2002 Chassagne-Montrachet white burgundy and emerged the clear fave. And not because this crowd was seeking a California butter-bomb cocktail chard. In fact, the Karia had brighter lemony acidity and all the mineral flavors of a good white burgundy but also had elements of tropical fruit with a long, soft finish. No harsh finish, no alcohol heat and NO big buttery vanilla-laden oak flavors to mask more subtle elements. A charming wine at about $30 that is pretty widely available at well stocked wine shops (our bottle came from the new Austin Spec's North). Terrific with steamed artichoke hearts dipped in aioli (as in the photo).

The Scent of a rockroom

The sweet smell of a winery is in the air in the new rockroom winemaking co-op digs as our recently arrived fruit ferments its way toward wine-dom. Briefly...
Whites:
Our little barrel of chardonnay is perking away nicely and you can already smell the toasty vanilla-caramel influences of the French oak barrel. Remember this will be blended with some wine from the same vineyard that is fermenting in neutral vessels, so we will be able to moderate the barrel character. Other whites are doing well ranging from the pinot gris which has almost fermented out completely to the Napa sauvignon blanc that is taking its own sweet time. Keeping our whites in tubs of ice-cooled water keeps fermentation temperatures low. Maybe Santa will bring us a glycol chiller!
Reds:
The picture above shows our merlot-cab-cab franc blend several days ago as it starts fermentation. Unlike the whites, we want fermentation temperatures to climb on this stuff so the bins are wrapped with insulation to make sure we get to 85 degrees plus. Fermentation is exothermic (ah look it up) so no external source of heat is required to easily hit this. The zinfandel got a couple extra days of cold soak to really get the fruit soaked out and be sure any raisined grapes got softened up enough to release their flavors and sugar. Look for pressing alerts on reds in a week or so.

All Great Wines Begin With ... Lab Work!

Last night's lab frenzy - all white juice got tested, conditioned with nutrients to keep the yeast healthy, and innoculated with yeast, so wine is happening! There in the pic you can see the pails where each batch is fermenting. Each pail sits in a tub of water with ice added daily to keep fermentation cool and slow - avoids loss of aromatics in the whites. In addition to these pail there is a quarter barrel of chardonnay fermenting in an oak barrel. Further back are the large tubs with red grapes soaking in a stew of their own juice. These tubs are wrapped with insulation and dry ice added to cold soak the flavors out of the grapes - a step that costs a little extra but gives fruit extraction a head start before fermentation begins in a day or two.

Zin and Chardonnay harvest this week

Our Russian River zinfandel gets picked tomorrow. I made wine from this vineyard in 03 and 04 but skipped last year when we did the barrel with 100% Mendocino zinfandel instead. I am looking forward to trying a barrel of this one. We will do it in a French oak quarter barrel, medium toast - I ordered the barrel today. Note the photo of the vineyard - these are the old head-trained vines that grow in clumps with no trellis and as they were planted in 1937 should qualify as "old vines". Top quality stuff.

Our Carneros chardonnay from Sangiacomo Vineyard is picked Friday and so far is showing great acidity which is good news as we go to barrel-ferment it. Let's hope this will allow for a rich malolactic-fermented wine that still has the acidity to round it out. The 2003 I did with this fruit turned out really nicely and barrel fermenting will ratchet things up a notch.

Here is an excerpt from an email our vineyard broker Peter Brehm sent out. He has a good view of things going on all over wine country as he coordinates grapes from many vineyards...


The flooding from winter rains of 2006 were topped by heavy Spring rain. This cocktail made farming difficult and very expensive and labor intensive. An unusually hot (up to 115°F) August spell stunned some grape vines, while stimulating others. A cool September nursed most grapes back to more normal conditions. The grapes growing within the immediate influence of the Pacific's cold water, accumulated sugar very slowly, while keeping their acids.
Harvesting Zinfandel & Petite Sirah before any Pinot Noir has set a new standard in grape ripening. Harvesting cool Russian River Malbec & Cab Franc while the yellow trays of the sparkling wine houses were still being filled - unheard of!
The California North Coast has broken down into two distinct zones. One near the coast and Bay which is producing intense wine with higher than normal acid and lower than normal pH. The warmer inland, California vineyards are on a more normal ripening track. On the 24th of September we will harvest the final two clones from Mahoney's Las Brisas Vineyard. A few days before harvest I got a 3.17pH and malic acid content of 2.9. This is with a sugar of over 25°. BV's White Salmon Vineyard staff will be harvesting Pinot Noir during the same week we are harvesting Pinot Noir in the Carneros. In 20 years I have never had a parallel; the same time harvest separated by 600 miles. This is indeed a unique year.