Dan’s Cellar Notes for October 2007

New Wine

October and November mean new wine. The early-harvested wines are already clearing. While many of the whites remain heavy with sediment, the more tannic reds may already be finished with mlf and leaving behind spent yeast, fugitive pigments, and excess “solid matter.” This is my favorite part of the wine-making “season.” It is, of course, a truism that wine improves with age, at least to a point, and then begins a slow decline. On the other hand, it could be argued that wine is never better than it is right now, brand new, still yeasty, raw, red, bursting with fruit.

I have a sneaky suspicion that lots of folks stuff the stoppers in those carboys after press-day and don't think of dipping their wine-thieves into the soup for weeks, or months—not until things seem stable and steady and sure-footed. Only when it's time to rack or sulfite or add oak do they think about perhaps stealing a sweet kiss from their own creation. If that's true for you, then all I can say is that you are missing some of the year's best wine.

Most wine lovers know something about the tradition-cum-marketing-extravaganza that accompanies the first commercial release of new wine in France. On the third Thursday of November the “Nouveau” (new) or “Primieur” (first) wine of Beaujolais is introduced, nearly simultaneously across the globe. But this really is a big bunch of commercial hoopla—even if it can also be great clean fun involving some mighty tasty wine. The real fiesta of the new wine takes place at vineyards the world over, right on the press platform. Press screws ratchet their way home to the characteristic click-clack of the arm. Bladder presses squeeze with the pressure of air or water, and, without fail, at the juice outlet there are glasses thrust to catch “samples” of new wine. Of course these samples are needed to check the gravity, or the acidity, or the Ph, to decide whether the pump to glass or steel or wood, and whether or not to inoculate with malo bugs. But most of these glasses—thick tumblers rather than delicate stemware—are carried straight to eagerly waiting lips and tongues and gullets! Glasses full are shared around, and smiles follow quickly.

Okay, admit it! You tasted some at the press. It was pretty awful. Unless you have done it before, and you were prepared for the yeast, the tannins, the chewy, sharp-edged, toughness of it all. But soon a few weeks pass. The hot harvest days turn cool and foggy, and the wines begin to settle. It's time to get the wine off the gross lees. At racking time now you bring a real wine glass—one with a stem—to the pump or siphon. You draw a sample and check the clarity—well, there's not much clarity at this point, but you had to look, right?:

Next you swirl the wine a bit and thrust your nose right into it. Hmmmmm. Still kind of funky from malolactic. Earthy smells, organic aromas, sulfurous fumes join with intense fruit and the sharp nose-bite of new alcohol. Of course you wouldn't bottle this sludge, but, admit it! You love it! You rack and sulfite the new wine, happy that it promises to be a good year...or not...

A few more weeks slip by. Thanksgiving is approaching. You need wine for the family gathering, but, of course, it's way too early to bottle anything from this year's harvest. But you suspect that that Rhone style red, or that big Cab you just made would be much better than what you still have left from past vintages. Of course, you need to check. And it's time to make preliminary tasting notes on all your wines from the vintage. These notes will be key to future blends, oak treatment, sulfite rates, etc. So you pull out your cellar book and your pen and...hours later you are sitting there, having made only a few off notes in the book, with a huge grin on your face. Oh my those wines are wonderful! That's what you're thinking.

But, of course, they aren't stable yet. They haven't totally cleared yet. They need fining or filtering or aging... But they do taste good! You know it's not the same flavor they will have this time next year. Nor will it be the same color, for all those fugitive pigments are still in the soup, so to speak. The red wines are purple ands the white wines are greenish yellow. The aromas are complex and evolving—fermentation funks are now gone and sharp clear fruit flavors and aromas dominate. This s the joy of new wine. This may not be the right thing to serve at a Thanksgiving feast, but it would be just perfect with a hunk of the right cheese and some fresh crusty bread out on a walking trail, or on the back patio, or with friends over an after-dinner get-together. Or...just for you, alone, to appreciate.

If you make wine, and you don't take every reasonable opportunity to enjoy the wonderfully fresh character of new wine, you are missing half the fun of wine making. Don't expect others to necessarily appreciate your new wines the way you do. They expect finished, “smooth,” wines that taste and smell, well, like wine. Don't bother casting your pearls before such swine. Just enjoy the new wine.

Oh, and when you do that late November racking, go ahead and fill up a bottle for yourself. Don't cork it, just use a rubber stopper, 'cause you're going to drink it! That, after all, is the whole point, isn't it?

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For info on the Central Virginia Winemaker’s group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CentralVirginiaWinemakers/