| The WeekEnd Brewer |
| The Wine Page |
| Ingredients |
| Wine Equipment |
Dan’s Cellar Notes for September 2005
Winemaking partners Bill and Ted crush/de-stem Traminette from Dan Lynch’s Long Mountain Vineyard (Lynchburg, VA.) on my front porch.
This may sound like a goofy question, ‘cause determining the ripeness of fruit certainly just requires a little common sense, and some pretty well-tuned taste buds, right? Well, not quite true.
We home winemakers occasionally have the opportunity to buy grapes and/or frozen musts from California—either from the Central Valley or from the more upscale vineyards of the North Coast (Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, etc.). For those of us used to using grapes, juices, musts or kits from other parts of the world, it can come as a shock when we receive buckets from California with labels telling us that the must contained therein was harvested at 28 degrees Brix or higher!
Last year, a winemaking buddy and I were trying to end a very long day of picking, crushing, hand destemming, and pressing our Virginia-grown grapes, when the UPS truck pulled up in front of my front-porch-cum-crush-pad. The driver proceeded to unload six large insulated boxes, each containing 44 pounds of Zinfandel from Lodi/Woodbridge in the upper corner of California’s Central Valley. The grapes were cold and beautiful. No hint of rot. The Zins were slightly raisined, and very, very sweet to the taste, the label told the truth. They had been harvested at 29.6 degrees Brix. IF I could find a yeast to successfully complete such fermentation, I’d have been left with a “table wine” of about 17% alcohol!!! Well what the heck is up with THAT???
Two more boxes were added to the pile: they contained Lodi Merlot at 22.5 degrees Brix. Around here, that would be considered super-ripe, but those grapes were filled with the taste and aromas of green peppers: the true sign of very immature grapes! Not what I expected. I was confronting the dilemma of ripeness.
In recent years, many California grape growers and winemakers have re-defined what it means for grapes to be ripe. Ripeness USED to mean that sugar was at about 22 degrees Brix, and acid had not yet fallen through the floor. You see, as grapes ripen, there comes a time when sugars tend to max out. About that same time, the acids in the grapes begin to plummet. Before this time, the grapes are said to be “green.” And, traditionally, at least, after this time…when sugars and acids are in balance, the grapes are said to be “ripe.”
These days, many California winemakers and growers prefer to look for “phenolic ripeness;” that is, they look to the color of the seeds, skins and rachises (the stem attachments to the grapes), and to the flavors in the grapes themselves. This makes a certain degree of sense, except that it happens to lead, in much of California, to grapes that are WAY higher in sugar than we normally expect for table wines, and WAY lower in acid. To my taste, such wines tend to be out of balance, awkward. The results tend to be wines of intense fruitiness—“fruit bombs: in the current parlance—but lacking in finesse, delicacy, and complexity. What’s more, to bring these wines into some semblance of palatability as table wines, the must has to be seriously diluted with acidulated water. Even so, it is now quite common for everyday wines to clock in at 13-15% alcohol.
Now this is not a problem in Virginia. We don’t have that cool, dry (or warm dry), very lengthy growing season that permits grapes to grow to super ripeness. Quite the opposite, in fact. More typically, our grapes are harvested while still too young, by almost any measure. If the stems are day-glow lime green, the rachises are green, the seeds are green, and the flavors are green….well we are just picking green grapes. When we get the grapes home and crush them, we tend to find that sugar levels are often no more than 20 degrees Brix—often much less. Acid levels tend to be moderately to very high. These are, no matter how you define it, under-ripe grapes. You cannot make great wine from unripe grapes. For the grower, facing the threat of mildews and bunch rot and bird damage, they are money in the bank, rather than money down the drain.
However, every now and then, something strange happens. The 2005 vintage seems to be one of those fortuitous oddities. As of this writing, I have already crushed and pressed three different Chardonnays, Traminette, Sauvignon blanc, and even some Cabernet sauvignon from Mecklenburg county (further south than I thought Cabs could be successfully grown). The sugar levels of the musts have been on the low side: from 18 to 20 degrees Brix. Nonetheless, all of the grapes have been “phenolically ripe.” Seeds are dark brown, rachises are brown, and flavors are full of fruit and varietal character, not green peppers, grass, or asparagus! While I’ve had to add sugar to these musts to bring the alcohol level up to what is expected, I have not yet detected any of the typical under-ripe flavors or aromas: no veggies or peppers or new-mown hay. These grapes are making very nice, ripe-fruit wines.
What’s the point? Maybe the Californianos have a good point about waiting for “phenolic ripeness,” and paying much less attention to “sugar ripeness.” Nonetheless, some of the “fruit bomb” wines they are producing on the Left Coast are overwhelming in their flavors and poorly balanced in their acid and alcohol profiles.
Here in Virginia, we need to pay much more attention to flavors and appearances in the grapes, and much less to “the numbers.” But in California, it might be a good idea if some folks would occasionally pick their grapes a little less ripe.
Several years ago, I accidentally stumbled upon a unique wine: Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough District, northern end of the South Island, New Zealand. Recently, at a meeting of my winemakers’ club, one person spoke rather disparagingly
of Sauvignon Blanc as a limp, sissified wine. I asked, and she acknowledged that her point of reference was Central Valley and mass-market coastal California examples. There is nothing wimpy about Marlborough Sauvignon!
In fact, these wines, typically have three distinctive components. First is greenness: asparagus, grass, or gooseberries. Next comes a huge in-your-face hit of limey acidity/pungency. That’s one of the real trademarks! Just as you are recoiling from these assaults on your sensibilities, huge gobs of tropical fruit come rolling over your tongue. Wow….this wine is special. If you try Sauvignon from Marlborough’s North Island neighbors—say, Hawkes Bay, Martinborough or Auckland—the wines tend to emphasize the rich tropical fruit and peach flavors. However, in Marlborough the winning characteristic is the combination of grassy-green, limey acidity, and luscious fruit. Yum!
I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Winexpert had added a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc to its Selection Estate Series. Of course I bought one of these rather pricey beasties right away. However, it didn’t take long to discover that there was something not-quite-right with this wine kit. Don’t get me wrong; the wine it made was delicious. It wasn’t, however, what I expected. The color was too dark. The fruit was too rich. The body was too full. I went over my logbook notes to make certain I hadn’t messed up in making up the kit, but I’m quite certain that was not the case. I had been prepared to write up a review of this wine as a great summer thirst-quencher for the July column…and the wine I had made nearly filled the bill…but it just was not right.
I called a contact with Winexpert, and he fully agreed that my kit was faulty in some way. He promised to have the distributor send me another kit, free of charge, and his promise was good: a few weeks later another kit arrived on my front porch. No sooner had I mixed it up than I realized how screwy the first kit had been. The color and texture—“fullness” of these juices were totally different. What’s more, the new, “correct” kit had wonderfully fresh, fruity aromas wafting out of the fermenter.
The new wine is still in the carboy, but is nearly ready to bottle. Tonight I took a good sample. Oh my! Oh my! This is a wonderful wine!! Okay, it’s not perfect. My preference for Marlborough Sauvignon would love to see more of the grass-and-veggies upfront. They’re too subtle in this wine. Nonetheless, the huge bolt of limey acidity is there, indeed, and it is followed by big—almost sweet-tasting—tropical fruit that just fills the mouth and slides on down. Yoweeee! Mighty fine.
At about $130-$140 per 23 liter kit, that makes your cost to be about US$4.50-$5.00 per bottle, not considering costs for bottles, corks, labels or overheads. This is, clearly, a pricey kit. However, even though Marlborough Sauvignon blanc is mainly a hot item among “connoisseurs,” and has not yet been zeroed in on by the wine-buying general public, these wines nonetheless sell commercially for $12-$25 a bottle. They are a bargain at that price, and the Winexpert kit is very much worth the asking price. This is world-class, delicious, quick-drinking white wine with all the in-your-face pungency of the bottled product. I intend to make a lot of these kits!
To learn more about Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, see: http://www.thewinenews.com/octnov03/feat.asp
***
For info on the Central Virginia Winemaker’s group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CentralVirginiaWinemakers/
Copyright 2005 L. Daniel Mouer