Les Blog

As I wrote a few days ago, the Cabernet Franc — long our favorite wine from our grower — wasn’t its usual self at last racking. While it’s been dependably fresh and lovely any time we pull it from barrel, last week it was dull and flat, seemingly absent the will to live. A little unsettling, to say the least.

Today I got back some lab results from our long-suffering friends at ETS Labs, so we have a better picture of what’s going on with this sullen teenager. But even as the data answers some questions, it raises some others.

Stroke your beard and consider a theory or two with me after the jump…
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A few nights ago we got together to rack our three wines, and of course, couldn’t help tasting them as they poured from barrel to tank and back into barrel.

2007 Cabernet Franc
I think the consensus was that contrary to any of our previous experiences with this wine at this stage, the Franc showed the worst of the three. It had a decent fragrance, but it was murky and lifeless in the mouth, oddly framed with a hint of oak (it’s in an essentially neutral barrel). And once past the tonsils, it was like it was never there. Overall, a far cry from the fresh, precocious party-in-your-mouth the Franc usually is — and the way it was in March, when last we racked it.

So, what’s going on? Theories abound — more in a future post — but it’s certainly true that most wines go through “dumb” or hibernative stages, where between one chemical state and another they’re kind of in limbo. I think of it like a construction project: you begin with one thing (nice bones, but what Nazi scientist designed that wallpaper!?), but before the shiny new thing emerges (did you notice it matches my iTouch?), you float like Dante through the undoing of one and the creation of the other, where your thing isn’t what it was, but it isn’t what it’ll become. It’s something, yet it’s also not quite anything, either. And you have to use a port-a-potty in the back yard for a month.

Anyway, that’s not unusual for wine as it evolves (for example, see my notes on the Sauvignon, below), but it’s not how the Franc has ever performed in the past. More soon.

Cabernet Sauvignon
Next up was the Cab. It was also a little shuttered, but more in a way you’d expect at this stage in its life. All the stuffing was there, and indeed, it had a lot of complexity and good feel in the mouth, though not much of a finish that night. All in all, however, showed pretty good life for so young a wine, and all present murmured approval into their cups.

Merlot
If you’ve got a weak heart, please skip the second half of this sentence: the merlot was the best wine of the evening. I’ll give you a minute to get your bearings. Sometimes a glass of wine helps.

While it lacked a little backbone (though in point of fact, it showed the backbone of a good Merlot), it betrayed surprising life, in addition to a bass marimba-like depth and velvetyness in the mouth. Almost complex, and a pretty good ride through the finish.

If this is in fact representative of where the Merlot will end up (no guarantees there, of course), I’d say this is due to a combination of three things: 1) wild yeast (so many gene pools, so many flavors); 2) crop load (we asked the grower to dramatically reduce yield in 2007: and 3) pulling a seignée out of it (in a nutshell, a seignée drains juice from a fermenter, increasing the proportion of flavor-packed skins to tasty juice). I’d give more of a nod to 2 and 3 than 1, but probably all played a role.

Next up is blending, so we’ll see if this was an aberration or a strategy worth repeating.

In our relentless quest to compromise each of the five senses, the Garagistes have now ticked off one more: sound. Our vast, if subterranean efforts have been highlighted in a new broadcast/podcast of Destination DIY, Julie Sabatier’s “monthly radio show and podcast about revolutionary do-it-yourself projects.”

Julie actually found us through my Life in Vine site, where I store a passel of articles I’ve written, one of two of which focus on amateur winemaking. So she brought her spiffy digital recorder and photographer Tim LaBarge down the back stairs to take a listen. “This basement has the best sound of any I’ve ever been in,” she said, incredulously — how many wineries can boast that, eh?

Mercifully, the podcast isn’t just about us. In fact, it’s mostly about amateur brewers, one set of which came to a listening party at NE Portland’s Waypost Julie threw together to debut her mix. Affable brewers Nate and Matt passed around one of their batches, and it was incredibly well-made. Hmm: if we get rid of the washer/dryer, we’d have room for a mashtun downstairs…

Here’s the podcast itself, synched with Tim’s great pics, and here’s Julie’s home at KBOO. And be sure to check out Julie’s other podcasts here : she’s definitely a skilled editor and interviewer.

Somewhere around 10pm last night, we stretched the last label over the last bottle of 2006 Peugeot, drawing to a close that plucky vintage. It’s kind of like putting the last fin-fold on a paper airplane and then flicking it into space — it could crash, it could sail, but aside from the momentum you put into the construction and the toss, its destiny is now pretty much out of your hands.

Based on what I tasted last night, though, I think it’ll float on the breeze quite elegantly for a while. Into a holding tank, we siphoned half of each of the barrels we’d put the blend into back in the fall, and then added half of the stainless steel container that held the rest of the blend. After bottling that, we siphoned what remained in each of those containers into the tank, bottling until the last dregs dripped through the hose. A pain in the ass, but the idea behind it was that each barrel probably evolved a little differently over the last 7 months, so bottling them one after the other would result in different wines. More critically, the wine stored in the stainless — because it had no further oak exposure after blending — was indeed tighter, so it at least had to be spread around.

We’d never bottled this much wine at one sitting, so while we knew it would be a slog, we didn’t really know how much of one. A few volunteers came early to think through the system, get it set up, and begin the first blend into tank, and then the full complement came a few hours later at 3. While the two blends into tank added to the time, it was, as always, the labeling that took for-effing-ever. We’ve got to figure out a better way to do that. If George hadn’t requested his cases come un-labeled, we might still be sticky with glue.

All in all, though, I think it was worth it. The Peug was remarkably fragrant in the tank, and it laid gracefully in the mouth with lovely ripe fruit, subtle tannin, and a good spine of acidity. Before we added the first portion from the stainless, it tasted round, full, and ready to slide down the gullet; after the tighter product from the stainless, it clenched up again, but it says to me that after a year or so, this one should be exceptionally lovely. That’s borne out by the 2005 Peug, which blossomed about 3 years out.

Mmmmmm… when is 2009 again? Pics from bottling after the break…
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Last week’s racking proceeded with our characteristic machine-like efficiency - when we used our machines, that is.

The Cabernet Sauvignon continues to shine. Great fruit, good tannins which are getting better with every racking (I’ll bet from the wood — see here for our oak strategy this year), transporting aromas of pencil shavings and saddle. This one’s going to be the best Cowan by far.

Next up was the Merlot. It seemed its usual, uncomplicated and amiable self at first, but lurking around the periphery — like the sense you get walking into a familiar room which looks empty, but has someone else inside — was an off odor. It’s a slight tint of VA (or volatile acidity, which betrays a lovely smell of fingernail polish), but there was also a hint of vegetation. A bit of veg can be typical of Merlot’s flavor profile, but this felt ever so slightly beyond that. After racking, everything seemed fine - no VA, no significant veg, and nice fruit. I measured the free SO₂ at about 65, which seems safe enough, so no further additions. We’ll want to keep an eye on this one, though.

Lastly, we tasted the Cabernet Franc, which seemed just fine where it was — good, approachable structure, lovely, bright fruit. So we decided to simply top the barrel and leave the racking for the next go-around in April.

Just got our new, imprinted corks from Scott Labs in California. Are we big time or what?

Scott’s been our supplier for a couple of years now, and as reflected in the bottles I’ve opened, the quality has been great. Even though the cork industry has been ramping up its quality control (no doubt feeling the heat as winemakers choose alternate closures more and more), you can still pretty much count on one bottle per case coming up corked. That means finding a supplier with ever better quality control is key. Scott’s been that for us so far — don’t let up, guys!

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“Imbottigliamento,” she whispered in my ear, her husky voice the sensual texture of soft tannins. “Pigia…” — she paused, taunting me — “diraspatrici.” My palms began to sweat. I’m a married man, but who among you would not also have been swayed? I took out my credit card…

Si, si, la mia amore. Now that last year’s harvest is safely hibernating in the cellar, it’s time to turn our attention to the finer, more stainless steel things in life: a better bottler (imbottigliamento; and specifically una riempitrice (filler) in the Italian native to the best manufacturers of them), if not a stemmer-crusher (or pigia-diraspatrice). Doesn’t everything sound better in Italian?

It certainly did to me. Before the dollar plummeted any further against the Euro, a lusty voice inside told me to buy and I did, picking up a new 5-bottle filler in advance of our epic bottling later this spring. Courtesy of Enotecnica Pillan, an Italian company headquartered in the heart of the Veneto, northwest of Venice, behold what beauty can be captured in 304-type stainless steel:

From the English version of their website:

With the handicraft tradition “of the done good things” work from over 50 years in the manufacture of several models of crushers, destemmers, presses for the grape, filters for the wine and machines for the working of the fruit.

The Babelfish, has it not the bringing of us to greater closeness?

Actually, that bit in the quotes is “delle cose fatte bene” in the original (ancora, più bello in Italiano, si?), which is probably better translated as “of well-made things,” or more loosely, a tradition “of making things well.” This filler of the bottles is no exception. For a previous bottling or two, we’ve had the good fortune to borrow one from a friend who works for Edgefield. It easily surpasses the test of a great tool: once you get the hang of it, it stops being an inanimate, herky piece of hardware and becomes into a fluid extension of whatever you’re doing. Beautiful.

Now, uh, how do I get this lipstick off my collar?