Co-op bottling day

After fining with a little bentonite we bottled our experimental Napa sauv blanc today. A nice bright wine but just not sure this source is worth taking in a commercial direction. For now this one will be co-op only wine, great for light seafood pairing on a hundred degree day. Plenty of those this year!.

Racking the 07s

While 2007 whites and lighter reds like pinot noir have already gone to bottle (and in some cases table) many of the bigger reds are being moved (racked) from one barrel to another one last time before bottling. This will help settle out any remaining solids and clarify the wine without requiring filtering. Here is a shot of our experimental zinfandel being racked. This week I will be in CA to check on syrah and cab too.

wine science

Co-op member Dave and daughter Sam have some dark pink plonk here as we made some science fair wine from grocery store grapes. A fun learning experience about fruit and yeast and what happens when they get together. And how's the wine, you ask? ...Uh, a fun learning experience...

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!

vineyard news and views

For you serious wine geeks here is some great information direct from the vineyard manager about La Encantada pinot noir vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills near Santa Barbara. We should be getting grapes next week for our second rockroom vineyard-designated wine from this organically farmed vineyard.

WOW - 2006 is a wrap

With a bottling session Saturday we got the last of the 2006 co-op wines (our experimental not-for-sale stuff made right here in Austin) safely in bottles. 120 bottles give or take a few. Thanks to those who stopped by to help. Hopefully the takeaway bottles made it worthwhile. Some very promising stuff here. The really big news from Saturday is the barrel-aged bordeaux blend (BDX for short) that is a 60/25/15% blend of merlot/cab/cab franc. These grapes, from different Napa vineyards, were co-fermented so have lived together now for about 20 months. It is a happy partnership that is so far showing up as a really big wine. Finally, at the other end of the spectrum, is our simple blend, tagged simply Red #2. This is mostly a second wine made from pink "bleed juice", taken from our zinfandel and BDX grapes to concentrate them, fermented on merlot, cab, cab franc and zin press skin. The resulting wine was a light fruity red that was then blended with a little barrel-aged zinfandel to give it a little heft. Still an easy-drinking red that will be fun this fall. Finally, we bottled a small test batch of a new zinfandel vineyard blended with a bit of our standby zin (both Russian River AVA but very different grapes nonetheless). Early indications are that this best suited to being a blending zin as it displays some striking peppery and herbal aromas that might be too much all alone. We will watch to see how it develops but it is an interesting contrast to our fruit-driven standby vineyard.

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...

crankin some zin

While the grownups yakked Alex supplied the muscle to separate our Russian River zin from its skins. Our co-op reds are now pressed and will age for a year or so in their barrels.

pinot press

Our Carneros pinot noir finished primary fermentation and we pressed it today. 2 different pinot clones from the same vineyard - UCD18 for color and bright acidity, Dijon clone 115 for earthy aromas and flavors. Now for malolactic fermentation in barrel and aging. While we worked we sipped on a Loring Rosella's Vineyard pinot from 2005 - great inspiration for our humble little wine!

uh-oh, wine is happening

During Prohibition there was an enterprising company that would send out blocks of dried zinfandel grapes with a label on the package that said "warning - do not add water and yeast or wine may result". Well I feel I must warn you that those grapes we had delivered to Austin are now turning into wine. Just the way it goes, expecially when you pitch in a little wine yeast. Here is a photo of the pinot noir frothing away as yeast eat sugar and spit out alcohol. The process is moving fast and we will be pressing pinot and zin in the coming week.

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!

California crush finale

Rockroom's 2007 crush came to a close yesterday with the pressing of our White Hawk Vineyard syrah. The wines now begin their beauty sleep leading to bottling in 2008 or 2009, depending on varietal. Of course by then we will have some 06 wines to enjoy!

w.o.w. - chilly sauv blanc

As summer draws to a close here in Texas there is still enough sun and heat to merit popping a well chilled white. I was pleased to open one of our own rockroom wines - a 2005 Napa sauvignon blanc - and find it full of good citrus and floral aromas and grapefruit and green apple flavors. Crisp, bright and great with light food and a hot day. Some of you still have a bottle or two of this wine - enjoy it now while the weather is warm! Better yet, sip it next to the 2006 version we made and lets talk about which is better...

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...

2005 Rhone blend(s)

For co-op folks making the 2005 Rhone Blend - it is now bottled, labeled and ready to go! Now strictly speaking, a "Rhone Blend" is made exclusively from varietals typical to the Rhone River region of southern France. For reds this would mean primarly grenache and syrah. When we made our blend in 2005 we also included some petite sirah which, DNA testing has proven, is a cross of syrah and a lesser known rhone varietal called peloursin. So petite sirah is Rhone too and we threw a little in our mix. However, when tasting through various blends on the way to coming up with our final wines to bottle, we tried one combo that included a bit of unoaked 2005 zinfandel (certainly not a Rhone varietal) - it was really nice! The bright fruit of the zin complemented the grenache-oriented aromas and filled a flat spot in the mid-palate flavor. Not sure what to call this blend, I just went with Red #1. So here is what we ended up with and what is going in each case of "Rhone Blend" for 2005:

Grenache (2 btls): We made a small batch of just grenache for blending purposes and with a chunk of that we decided to make a Chateuneuf du Pape style blend: 80% grenache, 15% syrah, 5% petite sirah.

GSPS (2 btls): This was our primary blend: 50% grenache, 38% syrah and 12% petite sirah blended as crushed grapes, fermented, pressed and aged together (some in oak and some in stainless steel).

Red #1 (8 btls): Mostly Rhone (41/31/8% of grenache, syrah & petite sirah) but with a bit of zinfandel (20%, not 10% as the label designer (me) typo-ed on the label) this is a well-rounded table red with enough acidity to play nicely with food but enough flavor to sip on its own.

So there is the lineup - next time you are by the rockroom be sure to pick up your wine!

wow - Miles would NOT approve

Well drinking through a few wines this week I just did not have one that was up to snuff for wine of the week. Therefore, a detour...

For those of you who saw the movie Sideways, remember when the tasting room guy asked Miles if he liked the cabernet franc he was sipping? He wrinkled his nose and dumped the glass in the spit bucket, dismissing cab francs in general for making bad wines. Of course at the end of the movie he sips his precious 61 Cheval Blanc from a styrofoam cup, I guess not realizing it is a blend of cab franc and merlot - the two grapes he trashes in the movie. Great case in point of a wine snob that does not know what he is talking about. Very common. Which is why the safe strategy is to never categorically dismiss any wine as you might be surprised at what you like. OK, so my rambling gets me to the point that I popped the cork on a 2004 rockroom cabernet franc and it is tasting really nice. It does have some of those herbal, earthy even veggie aromas that I guess Miles hates, but they come together in a way that is, well, almost pinot-like. Between that and its light color and soft tannins, this wine really made me think about pinot noir! Although I must admit that just about everything makes me think about pinot noir! Including wines that make me think - "man I wish I could dump this crap and have some pinot noir!" So where can you find some of this lovely cab franc? Well, only in the rockroom. Price? - sorry, like our other Austin-made wines it is not for sale, but it is certainly available for tasting. Just come by and say the word!

Bottling day

The 2005 zinfandel and chardonnay went to bottle today. We had several sets of hands pitching in so we made quick work of about 8 cases of zin and 5 of chardonnay. The zin went to bottle unfiltered while the chard was minimally filtered and NOT cold-stabilized, so if you put it in the fridgie for several days it might develop a small sediment of "wine diamonds" (hey, I didn't make that up - google it). Don't get too excited - these crystals can form over time, especially in cool storage conditions, as the natrually occuring tartaric acid in the wine precipatetes out of solution as potassium bitartrate (available on your spice rack as cream of tartar). Most American white wines are processed by chilling the wine in large vats before bottling to force this precipation to occur - better for retail sales to consumers who might think the crystals are bits of broken glass. We did not do this step on our white wines. In Europe, especially Germany where grapes are more acidic, minimally-processed white wines will often develop these crystals over time. Check it out next time you open an old Trockenbeerenauslese ;-).

Press Operator

We pressed our zin and merlot blend today. The zin is our Russian River grapes and the merlot blend is all Napa fruit - majority merlot with some cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc. Harold cranks on the zin in the first photo above and in the second pic Mark pours free run from the merlot blend into a new barrel. Pressing went well - so now we wait for aging to work its magic...

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.