Harvest 2011 begins!

With old vines zin! Each of these old "knarled head" vines struggles to produce 5 to 10 clusters of ripe zinfandel.

WOW - Ridge with paella

Appropriate I think that with this Wine of the Week we honor the memory of Donn Reisen who died last week after 32 years building Ridge into one of only a few true icons of California wine. Remember that Ridge, with its Montebello cab blend, joined with a few other California wineries (like Stags' Leap Cellars, the ultimate winner) to beat the French at the 1976 "Judgement of Paris" pitting California cabs against some of Bordeaux's finest. A much more humble wine, Ridge's Three Valleys is a Sonoma County blend that is mostly zin with a splash of petite sirah and carignan. It is pretty easy to find, easy drinking and like most Ridge zins is a friend to food. A hit with paella Saturday as we celebrated Eugene Sepulveda's birthday. Happy birthday Eugene!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

wow - a working vacation

I am taking a brief break from vacation to dutifully post a wine of the week: I suggest that next time you are in Berkeley, CA and hungry for a bite of lunch you stop in and enjoy a glass of the house zinfandel at Chez Panisse - no kidding! We found ourselves in this situation after a little Berkeley shopping (Zac had to have some Birkenstocks from Berkeley) and got lucky with no reservations as they had a couple no-shows. Fabulous lunch of course and great fun to visit Alice Waters' hallowed shrine of the Slow Food Movement. The wine is made for Chez Panisse by Green and Red Vineyards and is a yummy balance between great zin fruit and a bit of earthy seriousness.

wow - big flavors for memorial day

Big steak , big wines. Ribeyes off the grill are full of bold flavors and yummy marbling. To stand up to all that flavor a bold wine is in order, and firm tannins help 'cleanse the palate' between juicy bites of fattier cuts of beef. Both Siduri's Van Der Kamp Vineyard pinot noir (2002) and rockroom's Mendocino zinfandel (2005) were up to the challenge. Of course a nice cabernet is the go-to in situations like this, but these alternative did just fine for us.

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.

2006 Grapes Arrived

Yesterday the fridgee truck arrived with our shipment of 1300 lbs of premium California wine grapes. The whites are in the form of pressed and settled juice ready for a cool fermentation into white wine. The reds will go through various cold-soak regimens after which yeast will be added to start their fermentations. If all goes well we will be pressing wine in mid to late December.

In case you have forgotten what we are making or only wrote down the wines you are participating in, here is the full list:

Zinfandel - Russian River - a different vineyard source than we used in '05 (that was Mendocino) this is an old vines vineyard that rockroom sourced from in '03 and '04.

Right Bank Blend - Napa Valley - like its distant cousins being made from grapes grown on the "right bank" of Bordeaux's Dourdogne River, this wine will lead with merlot but we will give it an American-style boost from a solid dose of cabernet sauvignon and a splash of cabernet franc. Certainly an elegant sibling to that Inkgrade badboy we are making!

Chardonnay - being made in 2 styles from 2 sources: a big California-style barrel-fermented (Radoux French oak barrel, medium+ toast) Carneros chard, and a low-oak Santa Lucia Highlands chard going for a more acidic, food-friendly wine. Assuming the SLH juice tests out with solid acid levels (looks likely) we will make a small batch of sparkling "baby-blanc-de-blancs" wine as well.

Sauvignon Blanc - Napa Valley - same source as 2005 but more of it - it disappeared way too fast!

Pinot Gris - Suisun Valley - first time for this one. Call it pinot gris or call it pinot grigio - lets just hope it's good!

If you are in Austin over the Thanksgiving weekend you might want to drop by on Saturday or Sunday as things get going!

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.