TRAVESSIA Winery Blog

Pressing Pinot Noir

The inevitable Veraison blog post

Any winery or winemaker who has a blog always takes the opportunity to show off what is one of the most exciting times in the yearly cycle of grape growing.  I’m going to copy everyone else and do the same with this week’s post.
 
It’s called Veraison and it signifies the color change in the grape berries.  More importantly, it represents the change from berry growth to berry ripening.  At this point in the growing season berries begin to soften and change color from green to either red or yellow depending on the grape variety.
 
At the St.Jorge vineyard this past Saturday, August 16th, I walked the vineyard as I do often when I looked down row 48 and realized that the Pinot Noir had just started to turn color.  It happened fairly quickly since I had been there just 3 days before and there was no veraison to be seen. 
 
I had been waiting for this to happen for a few days now and the erratic weather we experienced the first two weeks of August had started to make me a bit concerned.  I have been reading about Varaison from everyone else in the world and it seemed as if the Veraison Gods had forgotten about us.  On July 28, Morgan at Bedrock Wine Co. declared Veraison at some of the vineyards he sources fruit from.  Kristy Charles followed the next day.  Jason at Tablas Creek on July 30.  The Benchland Blog on August 6.  Even if you don’t have the time to read through their blog posts, I highly recommend you click on through just for their pictures which are much prettier than mine.

 
I see this as a wake-up call to what’s coming in just a few weeks… harvest.  It tells us winemakers that it’s time to start ordering fresh laboratory supplies, yeasts and additives if necessary, clean the dust off the destemmer-crusher and the press.  In just about two months the “madness” that is harvest and crush will begin once again.

Update:  I forgot to mention that on August 15, Jeff from Twisted Oak winery in California's Calaveras County posted a message on his blog... the first fruit of this year's harvest was arriving at the winery.  Is that amazing or what?

Sparkling Matters

With the Celtics beating of the LA Lakers in the NBA finals, there is no doubt that Boston is the #1 sports city in the world right now.  Over the past few years all of its professional sports teams (all but the Boston Bruins) have reached the finals in their respective leagues and in most cases won it all.  So it's natural that plenty of “Champagne” is being poured not only in locker rooms but all over town.  The Boston Three Party was finally able to pop the Champagne last night, but I wonder how much the three amigos really know about the bubbly stuff.

Technically and legally, “Champagne” is NOT a type of wine, it's a region of France.  The wine itself is called “Sparkling” in English, “Espumante” in Portuguese, “Spumante” in Italian, etc.  So, when you buy a bottle of “Champagne” you are buying a sparkling wine specifically made from grapes grown in the “Champagne” region of France.

There are three main methods used in the production of sparkling wine. The first is simple injection of CO2 just like it is done for soft drinks, but this produces big bubbles that dissipate quickly in the glass.  The second is called the Charmat process in which the wine undergoes a secondary fermentation in bulk tanks and is bottled under pressure. This method is used mostly for Italian sparkling wines and produces smaller, longer-lasting bubbles.  The third and most expensive method is the traditional method or Méthode Champenoise.  With this method the bubbles are produced by secondary fermentation in the bottle - very labor intensive and time consuming.  This third method usually results in a much more complex wine and also higher price.
 
Champagne is typically made from three grape varietals:  Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.  Sparkling wines can be made from any grape varietals and in fact Australia has become known for making some interesting sparkling wines with the Syrah grape.  You can drink Champagne or Sparkling wine anytime, not just on New Year’s Eve or when your favorite team wins a title.  Don't just take my word for it.
 
I still don't know why is it that every champion must proclaim his or her status by quaffing this stuff.  Or for that matter... why is it that we celebrate a New Year and other special events with this type of wine?  Anyone out there know why?

Harvest 2007 Has Begun

Last weekend, with the great help of my cousin Edson and good friend Eddie, I harvested 120 vines of Pinot Noir from Running Brook's Dartmouth Vineyard.  We started at 6:30AM under some showers that just didn't stop... until after we were done.  RB offered this fruit to me so that I can run some winemaking trials.

We took the fruit home, approximately 900 lbs of it, crushed it and initiated something that in winemaking we call "cold soak".  The crushed fruit and the juice mixture (called must) is brought down to a temperature below 50F.  The pros do this either in tanks equipped with chilling mechanisms or in open containers with cooling snakes or plates.  At home I do this with sealed water gallons and bottles which I have previously frozen and sanitized.  Cold soaking helps extract flavors, color and tannins from the skins prior to fermentation.  Basically, the juice is in contact with the skins for a few days allowing all of the "goodies" to be extracted into the juice which eventually will become wine.

On the third day of cold soaking I removed a few gallons of juice out of the cold soaking vessel with two goals in mind.  First, "bleeding" off a small percentage of the juice from contact with the skins should help concentrate the flavor of the finished wine.  Second, I plan on using the juice that was removed to make a rosé wine, something I have been wanting to try to make for a while.  I hear that this Summer sales of Rosé wine increased in the United States.  Maybe people are realizing that there is a lot more to rosé wines than what the typical White Zinfandel offers.

I will post updates on the making of this Pinot Noir as it moves along.

Got Pinot?

Pinot Noir – The varietal that is the soul of red wine from the Burgundy region in France.  It is also one of the three varietals typically used to make the sparkling wines of Champagne (the other two being Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier).  In the United States most Pinot Noir is grown in California with Oregon coming in second.

By all accounts Pinot Noir is one of the most difficult grapes to cultivate and make quality wine with.  The vine tends to bud early making it vulnerable to spring frosts. It reaches its fullest expression when it’s allowed to ripen very slowly, making it susceptible to cold and rain in the fall.  In the winery, Pinot Noir is prone to damage from poor technique and it requires gentle care from the time it is crushed to the time it is bottled.

The popularity of Pinot Noir over the last couple of years has soared to new heights.  Some say this is mostly driven by the Sideways effect.  Others say that its gamut of flavors and bouquets make it one of the most versatile wines to pair with food and thus its increased popularity. In the words of wine critic Robert Parker:  "When it's great, pinot noir produces the most complex, hedonistic, and remarkably thrilling red wine in the world..."  This increase in popularity coupled with the challenges faced by growers and winemakers in producing a quality wine from it has lead to a higher fruit cost (basic supply-demand) and ultimately higher cost for the wines that are made from it.  The majority of us who don’t have a boat load of disposable income to spend on “trendy” wine might have to wait for the Pinot market to cool off before we can put a quality Pinot Noir on the table.  Good deals are out their to be found but far from what you can encounter for a Merlot or even Cabernet Sauvignon.

Honestly, I’m still discovering and trying to decide where I stand with Pinot Noir wine.  I have a love/hate relationship with it at the moment.  The fact that it took me $24 for a bottle of Pinot (Thanksgiving being the special occasion) before I could say “yeah this is a wine I would drink every day” does not help the cause when I can find quality reds of other varietals for a lot less money.

But hey… I have a chance to make my own Pinot Noir!  Sure it probably won’t stand up to a Burgundy or a California Russian River Valley… but the mere fact that we can make Pinot Noir red wine here in New England constitutes a great accomplishment.  At Running Brook we are expecting a good Pinot Noir harvest this season.  The weather has been quite dry this Summer which helps concentrate the flavors in the fruit (7.46 inches of rain recorded in Dartmouth from May 1st to August 31st, far the lowest in the past 8 years).  Unlike Californians, we don't have to worry about fruit that isn't completely ripe while sugar levels have gone through the roof due to extremely high temperatures.  On the contrary we may sometimes want more heat.  If mother nature continues to cooperate and rain is kept to a minimum between now and harvest, we’ll be on our way to a great Pinot Noir 2007 vintage.

So, you got Pinot?  Let me know what you have tried and what you liked/disliked about it.  Have you found any good deals?  Any other New England red Pinot out there?