I've been spending a lot of time tasting through all of my new wines. These are wines which we'll release sometime between this Spring and next Winter. From the 2009 vintage of the Trapeze to the 2010 Chardonnay, I am very pleased with how these wines are progressing.
What I've been tasting re-enforces a thought that has been on my mind a lot lately...
Winemaking can be trivial
From the day grapes arrive at a winery to the day the wine is placed on the sales shelves, there are dozens if not hundreds of decision making points at which a winemaker can impact the final taste of a wine. However, my personally experience thus far is that when I take a "low input" approach to winemaking and monitor more than manipulate, it's fairly easy to make a wine that I love and that I firmly believe most of my customers will enjoy and want to pay for.
There is however a critical aspect to all this... Good quality grapes. How good? As good as I can afford given my target price and market. Any less quality and I will begin practicing "winemaking" to the full extent of the word. That's when things usually tend to get let's just say… complicated. When I begin with grapes that I believe to be of the highest quality, most of what I'm doing in the winery plays a small role in the taste of the wine. This may sound a bit "poetic", but it's reality. The quality of the grapes that I purchase for my wines are what makes the wine what it is. In the end, these aren't only my wines… they are also the wines of the farmers who grew the grapes.
Event Notice: I will be at the Urban Grape in Chestnut Hill this coming Saturday from 2PM through 5PM pouring Travessia's wines. More details in our events page. Would love to see you there.







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