Pre-Baby Grapes are here!

I wish I could say that these cute little pre-baby grapes are on my Marquette vines, but alas I am not expecting to see grape production from them for another year. In fact, I have some wild grapes in the side yard and they are sprouting some little grape clusters. It's interesting...I have lived here for 12 years and had wild grapes in the woods behind the house the whole time. I never noticed. I think the birds got the grapes before they were big enough to notice. And we have so many mosquitos in the summer that the last thing I want to do is go walking in the woods. This past winter the kids and I were walking in the woods, exploring the property in the bug-free splendor of cold weather. We saw some vines that looked a lot like wild grape vines climbing some trees. But with no leaves (or grapes!), we couldn't be sure. Later, I found some more of them pretty close to the house in the side yard. So this spring I cleared the brush from around them, picked them up off the ground, put in a couple of stakes and tied them up to see what would appear. Voila! Wild grapes! Probably V. lubrusca, a wild version of the Concord grape. I'm going to do some kind of a simple trellis for these and see if I can bird-net them well enough to get some ripe grapes just for fun. These clusters are going to flower and then they become grapes.

Jacques

Update on the 2009 Pinot Noir!

Well, today was the day to rack the 2009 Pinot Noir again, having spent three months settling out. Once it was off the lees, I used up the rest of my "spare" jug to top it off, so now I'm down to just one single 6 gallon carboy. I also added the medium toast oak cubes--an alternative to oak barrel aging.

The fact is that for a home winemaker, using real oak barrels presents issues.

1. You need to keep them full all the time or they dry out and leak. If you are only doing a batch or two a year, this can be tricky. Some people fill them with water, but the water leaches out the oak flavor, which is the whole reason you use the oak in the first place.

2. They require cleaning in between uses--which can be a pain without the right equipment.

3. They are expensive!

4. Small barrels, suitable for the amount of wine the average home winemaker produces (5 to 15 gallons) have a lot of surface area in comparison to their volume. As a result, in newer barrels, the wine takes up too much oak flavor if it stays in the barrel too long. So you put the wine in the barrel for a month or two, then it has to go into something neutral (a glass carboy). Now what do you do with the empty barrel? See #1 above.

While the high-end winemakers still use oak barrels (French oak for the most part), many of the less expensive brands of wine simply cannot afford to use oak barrels and keep the price of the wine down. Virtually all wines priced under $10/bottle retail are not aged in oak but in stainless steel. The oak flavor comes from chips, cubes, or powder. These days, the oak infusion spiral is gaining popularity with home winemakers. It's what I will probably use for the next batch.

At this point, I am likely done racking this cuvée and it will stay in this carboy until the fall when it will be bottled. In Burgundy, it would age in barrel another year--they would be bottling the 2009 sometime in 2011, not 2010. But alas, I have limited space and by the fall I will have more grapes coming in. Time to start thinking about a label design I guess.

Speaking of grapes coming in, I have been told that my shipment of Chilean grapes will be here in about 2 weeks. The nice thing about the southern hemisphere grapes from the perspective of a home winemaker is that the seasons are 6 months off from the northern hemisphere. So I can make some wine in the fall from northern hemisphere grapes, then another batch in the spring from the southern hemisphere grapes! So have 120 pounds of Chilean pinot noir and 120 pounds of malbec on the way--to make about 7 gallons of each wine. :) Should be fun!

Jacques

Spring is here...time to work on my vines!

Spring came early and wet to New England this year. Now that the floods have subsided, I have been turning my attention to the vines in my yard. You may recall if you go back a year in this blog that I planted 6 Marquette (Vitis vinifera) wine grape vines in the side yard and 6 Reliance (Vitis labrusca) table grape vines in the front last spring. They didn't grow upward much last year, but put down good roots. I decided this spring to move the table grapes to a new hillside location near the driveway down by my neighbor's house. This spot gets good light and has excellent drainage. This cleared up my prime sunny front yard location for the ten more Marquette vines I have coming next month. This will put my Marquette vine count at 16, which should be more than enough to give me 10 gallons of wine once they are fully mature and producing. Of course the ultimate goal of my new winemaking hobby is to make my own wine from my own grapes grown in my own yard. And yes, I want the wine to be GOOD!

While digging up and moving the table grape vines, I noticed they had produced huge and healthy root systems. (I felt kind of bad disturbing those nice roots to move them). I hadn't been seeing a lot of growth above the soil (even though they produced plenty of leaves) but as it turned out, all the growth in the first year was developing roots.

During my vineyard course at Umass in March, I was turned on to the benefits of using grow tubes on the young vines. In studies, grow tubes take nearly a year off the amount of time for vines to mature and produce fruit by giving them a "turbo boost" in growth the first year. Since my vines didn't grow much last year, I figured the grow tubes would insure that my vines all reach the top wire on the trellis this year--hopefully even the new vines that are not going in until May when they show up.

Attached here are some pictures of the side yard Marquette vines, the hillside Reliance grapes and the grow tubes. I am really excited about this season and watching thee vines grow. I have started trellises but none are finished yet.

The last picture is a cutting left over after pruning that is already budding and growing. All I did was prune it off the vine, stick it in the ground and walk away. I'll be interested to see if it grows roots. This could be the start of my nursery!

Jacques

A visit to Le Clos Jordanne in Niagara!

If someone asked you "where's the next big North American Pinot Noir hot spot going to be?" would you have a good guess? The NY finger lakes, coastal New England, British Columbia and many other places are experimenting with this temperamental grape. But my friend Pierre thinks one of the most exciting new regions is the Niagara Peninsula. With the great lakes providing a moderating influence on both summer and winter temperatures, this region is blossoming with some amazing new wineries making world-class Chardonnay, Riesling and yes, Pinot Noir!

As it happens, Christine and I were planning to take the kids to Niagara Falls for April school vacation this year. So of course I called Pierre Séguin (my wine guru pal) and asked him which winery to visit. He told me that the best Niagara pinot hands down is made by Le Clos Jordanne in Ontario under the guidance of winemaker Thomas Bachelder. So I gave Thomas a call and he agreed to give me a tour of the facility and vineyards one afternoon ("Anything for a friend of my friend Pierre!" he exclaimed.) Le Clos Jordanne does not normally give tours as their new winery is not completed yet and they are operating for the time being out of an industrial building. Nonetheless, Christine and I showed up, with our kids and their portable DVD player in tow for a short tour. Thomas was having none of the quick tour! He suggested we throw the kids car seats in the back seat of his king cab pickup and took the whole family on a 4x4 adventure, touring the various fields of the vineyards. His enthusiasm for the terroir of the region and his eagerness to put the Niagara on the map in the way that Oregon and New Zealand now are was contagious. He repeatedly pointed out where things were on the map, then drove to them, pointing this way and that...explaining how two fields, only 200 yards apart, produced vastly different wines and were as such treated as separate cuvées from start to finish.

Bachelder is a huge devotee of the Burgundy style of pinot and goes as far as to use their model for the various cuvées of wine. They make a "village" wine from a mixture of grapes from all four vineyards, "premier crus" that are single vineyard cuvées (one from each of the four vineyards) and a "grand cru" (their best pinot) which is made from a special, prime section of the best vineyard. Their pinot noirs range from about $35 to over $100. Some people feel that they are making one of the very best pinot noirs in all of North America.

After our tour of the vineyards, we headed back to the winery, set the kids up with a movie to watch in the office and headed out to the barrel room where the 2009 pinots are aging in various age barrels. They use about 30% new oak (all French oak barrels made in Burgundy) and the rest are barrels that are used up to 4 times. Thomas pointed out that they are careful to keep records on how many times each barrel is used. So not only do they carefully control how many new barrels are used each year, but also how many one year old, two year old, three year old and four year old. Bachelder feels that the age of barrels in the right proportions carefully controls the evolution of the flavor of the final blend. (Not all old oak is the same. A barrel used 4 times is a lot different from one used only once).

We tasted 6 pinots from the 2009 vintage and 6 Chardonnays, all from barrel. I'm not that experienced with tasting young wines, but the differences between the different cuvées were readily apparent. I liked the powerful tannins of the Claystone Terrace vineyard and the delicate finesse of the Clos Jordanne vineyard which is only 200 yards away from the former.

After the tasting, we went to the Stone Road Grille nearby, known for it's wide selection of local wines and ordered up a bottle of 2006 Le Clos Jordanne to have with dinner. Wonderful. I think in the coming years you are going to be hearing more about Le Clos Jordanne and the Niagara peninsula in general as a pinot noir producer. Thanks Thomas for the incredible few hours!!

-Jacques

Yesterday, I spent the day at the University of Massachusetts' Cold Spring Orchard in Belchertown, MA for a course in growing and pruning grapes as part of their "Aggie Seminar" series. The course was taught by Dr. Duane Greene who did a very nice job. Wow, what a great time! First, we (about 20 aspiring grape growers) spent 3 hours in the classroom learning about important aspects of grape growing. After lunch we went out into the vineyard where they are growing several varieties of vinifera grapes quite successfully and learned about the art/science of pruning. After a lesson, we all broke out the pruning clippers and practiced with Dr. Greene's advice. I feel much more comfortable pruning grape vines. So in another year when my vines reach the size to be pruned, I'll know what I'm doing!

Lysozyme added....talk to me in May!

Well, now that the wine has been racked and sulfited lightly, today it was time to add lysozyme. Four ounces of 5% solution was added to the carboy. This naturally-occurring enzyme (which can be found in egg whites, among other places) kills bacteria by breaking down the cell walls. The main purpose of using it is to kill off the malolactic bacteria, so they do not become active again later, potentially producing CO2 to pop the cork out of a finished wine in a bottle. In theory, there should be no more malic acid in the wine, so the malolactic bacteria should not "come back to life" but you can never be sure what will happen if you give someone a bottle of wine and they store it in warm conditions (improperly!) and there is a smidge malic acid in there. So the best course of action is to kill off all the bacteria in the carboy with the lysozyme.

Now, I will let the wine sit for 3 months, so don't expect anything new until May!

On the bright side, I just ordered 250 pounds of fresh Chilean grapes from Beer & Wine Hobby in Woburn MA for delivery in May. Who knew I was 20 minutes from one of the largest beer and winemaking stores on the east coast?? I just found it a few weeks ago (thanks Mia!) They bring in fresh Chilean grapes in the spring and fresh California grapes in the fall. So I'll be starting two new cuvées of wine in May--another pinot noir and a malbec!

Jacques

Finally Malolactic is finished!

Well, after three weeks, the malolactic fermentation finally finished. The tiny bubbles trickled off to nothing and it was time to rack the wine off the lees (sediment) and allow it to chill down in the cellar, which is now 55 degrees in the dead of winter. Given the pH of around 3.8, I added 50 ppm (1/2 teaspoon) of Meta (meta bisulfate) to the new, clean 6 gallon carboy, and then elevated the full carboy on a stack of buckets to begin racking. "Racking" is just a fancy name for the process of siphoning off the wine into another carboy, leaving the lees (sediment composed of dead yeast cells, grape chunks, etc.) behind. Of course as you leave some of the sediment behind, you also end up with a new carboy that is not totally full. That's the reason I was cultivating another half-gallon jug of the excess wine that didn't fit into the carboy after fermentation. It is used to top off the new carboy.

Christine helped with the process and took some pictures (note shot of the lees at the bottom of the carboy). Then we had an opportunity to taste a little bit of the wine. It's good! Fruity, quite drinkable, and simple as we have not used any oak yet.

Now, we have a few months of cellaring in the carboy before the next step....