Wine & The City

Things you don't need to know about wine: Petals in the Rain

by Marco Montez

Unless you are studying wine or work in the wine business, there several aspects of it that you don't need to obsess about.

For example...
People often feel that in order to enjoy wine they must be able to discern its aromas in the glass. In our tasting room we often interact with visitors who feel a bit shy about their inability to "smell" the wine. Our recommendation: don't sweat it. If your interest in wine continues to develop, over time and with some practice you'll start "smelling" it. However, don't let this get in the way of your wine enjoyment.

And please… don't ever swirl your glass up in the air and aloud declare that you smell "petals in the rain"...

Move over, Willy Wonka!

by Jenn Marcos-Tripoli

Hello, hello!

One of the things that I love about hosting wine tastings for guests at Travessia's tasting room is offering ideas of what to eat with our wines at home. While wine is obviously delicious to sip on it's own, the experience is elevated with the right time, place, people, and of course, the perfect pairing. Though most people wouldn't think to pair the light bodied wines of Massachusetts with the strong, complex flavors of chocolate, it surprises everyone when I bust out these gritty, dark chocolate morsels with funky flavors like guajillo chile or ginger to pair with a light, crisp local riesling... And it works really well!

I decided to visit Taza Chocolate Factory to tour their facilities in Somerville, Mass., for some of what I like to call "hands-on research" (i.e.- eating chocolate... lots of it!) on one of my favorite tasting room's venders. As some of you may know, we've been selling Taza's Mexicano Discs for over a year and offering daily tastings of their dark chocolates along with our wines. I felt I was overdue to check out this local chocolate legend-in-the-making and learn more about what it takes to make authentic Mexican-style chocolates, and what better time to do this than around Valentine's Day? My husband, Eric, was definitely happy to tag along.

If there's one thing you should know about this company, it is that they are dedicated. After a trip to Oaxaca ("wuh-HA-kuh"), Mexico, and tasting stone-ground Mexican chocolate for the first time, founder Alex Whitmore was inspired to start a chocolate factory. He started out of his apartment, then over time acquired and refurbished vintage equipment, bought factory space in Somerville, and forged relationships directly with cacao growers in Bolivia, Belize and the Dominican Republic in order to get the best possible quality cacao for their chocolate nibs, discs, and bars. All of Taza's products are certified Direct Trade (an even more "fair" arrangement than Fair Trade), Organic, Vegan, Gluten-Free, and Kosher... And so delicious! They put Hershey & Willy Wonka to shame, in my opinion.

Our factory tour guide was Ayala, a lively, bubbly lady who was seriously passionate about chocolate! The small tour group had an age-range from eight to eighty, and we spent a whole hour weaving through the rooms, learning about all the ins and outs of Taza. Everything from the trees the cacao fruit (yes, fruit!) grows on, to the finished product being shipped to all 50 states and around the world from this little local factory!

There were lots of unique pieces of equipment and many steps to their chocolate-making process. Very rarely will a chocolate company make chocolate from bean-to-bar, but Taza is definitely one of them! Once the dried, fermented beans arrive at Taza, they roast and winnow the beans in small batches, which separate tasty cacao "nibs" from their shells. Instead of wasting the shells which aren't used in the chocolate-making process, they are sold to local businesses who use the shells to create craft beers, teas, and even mulch - gaining major sustainability brownie points in my book! After the winnowing process, they grind the nibs using a Molina, or Mexican stone mill, that uses hand-carved granite stones to create a thick chocolate-y paste, and then add any real, whole ingredients (cinnamon, coconut, vanilla beans, spicy chiles, you name it!) and organic cane sugar to a desired sweetness, then refine and temper the chocolate to different consistencies for the different types of chocolates they produce.

This made for an excellent day trip, was totally family-friendly, affordable, educational, and most of all, fun! The tour was $5 per person, lasted about an hour, and everyone I met at the factory were knowledgeable and super sweet (pun intended). Tours book up quick, so purchase your tickets online here about a week in advance!

A few of my favorite highlights from the tour:

-Having to wear hair (and beard) nets, because there aren't many things more hilarious than a beard net. Don't we look stylish?

-Much like fermenting grapes to produce wine, the beans of the cacao fruit are fermented to produce complex chocolate flavors. Some cacao growers will even take the flesh of the cacao fruit, called "baba de cacao" and produce cacao wine with it for their families! Where can I get some of that?!

-I also loved that Taza's company store featured items made using Taza chocolate from other companies from near and far... From Q's Nuts in Somerville to Big Spoon Roasters in Durham, North Carolina! It's really great to see small businesses support fellow small businesses.

-Pro-Tip: Mexicanos Discs make excellent Oaxacan-style hot cocoa, called Taza de Chocolate. Break apart one of your favorite flavored discs in a saucepan with a mug-full of your choice of milk (whole, skim, almond, soy, rice, whatever you want!), and whisk until warm and frothy. My favorite combinations are Salted Almond discs with almond milk and their Cinnamon discs with whole milk, yum! Taza even carries hand-carved, one-of-a-kind wooden chocolate whisks made from small-scale venders in Oaxaca called molinillos ("moh-lee-NEE-yos") which you can use to foam the milk. I thoroughly enjoyed them!

After the tour and buying copious amounts of "Factory Limited" chocolate (limited batches you can only buy at the Somerville location or online... I had to buy the "Mi Cariño" gift set... SO GOOD!), we stopped by Flour Bakery about a mile up the road on Mass Ave. for a post-chocolate coma snack, and I was pleasantly surprised to see another Travessia favorite, Shy Brother's Farm, on the menu! The Tartine special with their artisanal Cloumage curd was fantastic! It reminded me that my next "field trip" must be to their local cheese farm in Westport.

Until next time, cheers!

-Jenn

Senhor Zeca

by Marco Montez

As some of you may know, I've been working on a new winery project with my parents in Portugal. I will soon tell you more about that, but today I want to speak of a truly unique place and a very special person.

In Portugal people don't just drink wine, they live it. Everyone has an opinion about wine… when should the grapes be harvested, how the wine should be made, etc. In the countryside, residents plant grapevines in their land like we plant tomato vines in our backyards here in the US. Wine is embedded into the culture and life of most Portuguese. This is the way it has been for centuries.

During my last trip in February, I visited a long-time family friend, Senhor José Barreira (Zeca).
Senhor Zeca, who is 78 years old, lives in São Jumil, a small village in the Vinhais county of the Trás-Os-Montes Province.

São Jumil - Vinhais - Portugal

I remember visiting often with my parents as a kid. Food was always plentiful and so was the wine. I hadn't been here for over 20 years so after lunch I asked Senhor Zeca if we could go for a walk around the village. He took me to the "Adegas".

Adegas - São Jumil

São Jumil is known across the region for these "Adegas"… a cluster of small wineries built on a gently sloping hillside, some of which are dated as far back as the 18th century. Supposedly, this location was picked because it allowed for the wines to be aged at an appropriate natural temperature. How many wineries? According to Senhor Zeca, there are 48 of them altogether. There are now more wineries than people living in the village since São Jumil's population has dropped to a mere 35. Some of the winery owners have died and some have moved to the cities.

Senhor Zeca at his Cellar Door

Most of these wineries have common walls and share continuous roof tops. The typical winery here consists of nothing more than two rooms. First, a fermentation room consisting of a "Lagar". Grapes are dumped through a small door into the Lagar and fermented with nothing more than the occasional punch down of the fermentation cap. No yeasts added (they already live in the Lagar), no temperature control, no enzymes, no laboratory tools. It's non-interventional winemaking to the extreme. When the fermentation is completed, the wine is transferred to a second and adjacent lower-level room where it is stored and aged for the most part in 500 Liter "Pipas".

The Lagar

The Pipas

One can only imagine the joy and flurry at these Adegas during harvest! In his heyday, Senhor Zeca used to make the equivalent to 2,500 gallons per year! His family would drink part of it, give a lot to friends and sell some as well. These days, some of the Adegas have been abandoned and efforts to raise money to restore the collapsing buildings have failed.

Senhor Zeca and his Vineyard

Despite his age, Senhor Zeca still takes care of his vineyard. The grape varieties? That's really not of major concern here… it's a field blend of many varieties, just like it has always been.

As I left that day, I could not help but to wonder about the future of these Adegas. For how much longer will people like Senhor Zeca keep this very special place alive?

 

Jenn

by Jenn Marcos-Tripoli

I'm Jenn, the tasting room manager and event coordinator at Travessia Urban Winery. When Marco asked me to have a regular column on the winery's blog, I was psyched! It's great to feel like not only do I have one of the coolest jobs ever (HELLO?! Local wine, local cheese, & local chocolate!), but I also get to go to work every day and teach our visitors something new about Travessia, the excellent wines that Marco is producing, and our lovely micro-climate and region in Southeastern Mass. Not to mention plan fun events for our guests and curate awesome art and music shows featuring the local talent of the New Bedford area!

I plan on using my time blogging here to do something a little different, by taking you on my own personal journey with Travessia, wine, and the greater New Bedford area.

As a young wine drinker, I feel like a lot of my "Millennial" peers (even myself, along with many members of older generations) can be intimidated by learning about and drinking wine. I hear it every day at the winery, almost as if customers feel the need to apologize for their "lack of knowledge" prior to even tasting a wine. In my humble opinion, as long as you know what you like or are open to trying something new, there's never any need to apologize!

So my main goal in blogging for Travessia is to un-complicate the sometimes daunting endeavor of learning about wine - it should always be fun, never anxiety-inducing! I find that the more questions I ask, the more there is to learn; so I plan on sharing with you tidbits of knowledge I pick up along the way. Expect to find a lot of wine basics, pairing ideas, recipes, easy lessons you can try at home with your next bottle of wine, DIY crafty wine projects, and more!

Another aspect of my blogging column will focus on my adventures in and around this city, hopefully offering up some great ideas for your next day trip on the Coastal Wine Trail. As some of you may know, I'm still fairly new to New Bedford, and working downtown in this bustling little corner of Massachusetts has really opened my eyes to all the great things the South Coast has to offer. It's fascinating to be a first-hand witness to New Bedford's cultural renaissance, and I love feeling like I'm contributing in some small way by working with Marco to manage a small business that I believe fits in perfectly with the positive changes happening to this often-underestimated historic city. I plan on getting out and about, visiting all the places in the area I've heard of but haven't had a chance to see or experience... yet!

In between my blog posts, you can keep up to date with Travessia's happenings via my monthly event calendar email, Marco's quarterly newsletter, along with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram updates! Hope to see you soon at the tasting room!

Cheers!
-Jenn

Wine clarification with Bentonite

by Marco Montez

I'm often asked about what goes on at the winery during Winter. Most think of winemaking as harvesting, crushing and fermenting which all take place in the Fall, but there is in fact much work performed in a winery throughout Winter.

At Travessia, it is for the most part during Winter that white wines (and rosés if necessary) are clarified. Clarifying white wines is a fairly simple process, but one that is necessary before the wine is bottled. The following is my attempt at explaining one of the types of wine clarification, hopefully without getting too nerdy.

Grape berries contain proteins whose solubility decreases with the wine's alcohol content. These proteins often precipitate in the form of a visible haze in the wine especially when the wine is exposed to elevated temperatures (for example when someone buys a bottle of wine in a tasting room and leaves it in the trunk of a car during a hot Summer day - believe me, it happens…) Although this haze is purely an aesthetic problem since it has no taste, most people prefer their wine to look just like it did when they purchased the bottle.

Enter Bentonite...

Most white wines at Travessia are fined with Bentonite which is widely used by winemakers all over the world. Bentonite is essentially an impure clay formed by weathering of volcanic ash. When this Bentonite clay is hydrated in water, the minerals in it become positively charged. Mixed with wine, these positive ions in the clay bond with negatively charged particles (such as proteins) which are floating around in the wine and both sink to the bottom of the tank. Once on the bottom of the tank, the winemaker can then transfer the now clear wine off of the sediment. No Bentonite actually makes it to the final bottle of wine.

There are some drawbacks to fining, the most problematic being the stripping of aromas, flavors and color especially when too much Bentonite is used. So the goal of every winemaker is really to use the least amount of Bentonite necessary to accomplish the goal of clarifying the wine just enough. As a winemaker friend of mine puts it… if someone leaves their fresh milk in a hot car, it's their fault that the milk goes bad, not the cow's. At Travessia I've never used more than 0.4 grams of Bentonite for a volume that would be equivalent to the usual bottle of wine.

And that's Bentonite fining. If you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to ask which you can do by leaving a comment below.

Travessia's wine delivery guy...

Meet Marco, Travessia's wine delivery guy, making the first delivery of 2014 at Social Wines in Boston. Although most of our wine is sold from our tasting/sales room, there are a few locations in Massachusetts where you can purchase our wines. Here's a link to those locations.