Closing time 2.0- big winery work

Posted on by
Reply

Ok, so here I am, sitting in a train station in Cootamundra, (why don’t we have names in the U.S. like Cootamundra?  I love these people!) thinking about everything.  Thinking about home, what makes home home, what I want home to be, thinking about Australia, thinking about the future and thinking about wine.  I also am thinking that I haven’t written in this blog for a while.  Suffice to say things have been eventful on this side of the world, with a  trip to Melbourne, closing in on making a decision as to where I will be next vintage, (either going to be working in Russian River Valley, Napa Valley or Sonoma Valley) and being en route to a trip to Sydney, Osaka, Bangkok and Singapore.  However, if you want to hear about that, you’ll have to give me a ring or something.

 

So I guess this is a good time to tell you about Casella wines: the real dirt of the issue.  Casella wines makes wines in a dramatic and factory-like manner.  Some of the things they do seem down-right alien, and through-out the process, the chain of command is long enough that by the time it reaches the worker at the bottom the wine itself, the wine seems like just red stuff that it’s our job to process as if it were oil in a refinery.  The fact of the matter is because of the sheer volume of wine and the gross size of the winery, it doesn’t make sense to make wine the same way we do in another winery.  You can’t drain a tank, then hop in and shovel out the tank when there’s 200 tons of grapes in the tank.  So what we do is we hop on top and shoot down wine like firemen with powerful hoses to make a muck we can pump out.  It seems ridiculous, but it’s just the reality of this volume.  Even transferring a tank is a day-long operation, setting up lines that stretch some ½ mile long to get from one 1,100,000 (look at all the pretty zero’s!) liter tank to another.

 

It was definitely a positive learning experience nonetheless, however.  I’m learning that every winery in the world is going to do things differently, and I’m learning to roll with it.  Stone Hill made wine one way, Fresno State another, and now, Casella another.  It makes sense, as it allows them to make wine cheaply, and spend more money on grape quality (or not, depending on the product), but it’s not for me.  The wine-makers here have their hands somewhat tied.  You can’t take a risk with a million liter tank, you have to play it safe, and being careful and gentle isn’t really an option here, the processes here are not of the wine-maker’s design, rather, they are pre-set to handle large quantities of wine quickly and efficiently. 

 

That’s not to say that there aren’t good wines being made here, there most certainly are, especially the wines that came from the Riverina before the rains in March, but the biggest reason things here aren’t for me is the lack connection with the wine.  I think one of the romantic and fun things about wine is the intimacy: the experience of watching a wine grow into something beautiful.  The feeling of making something gorgeous is what drives any creative person to create, but here the watching is casual, and the beauty, well, let’s be honest, this is bulk wine…

Closing Time

Posted on by
Reply

So as crazy as it may seem this early in the year, the vintage at Casella Wines is wrapping up.  A large percentage of the seasonal workers are going to be cut this Thursday and it’s time to start looking forward to what comes next.

This isn’t really relevant, but it’s pretty. Enjoy!

As a child of the 90’s, Semisonic got to bring all the periods of my life to their poetic conclusions.  This is no exception.  However, as I get ready to move forward from 3 and a half months of working in the massive wine factory that is Casella’s, I have to look back and reflect on what I learned.

Besides getting more comfortable in a winery environment after graduating from school, dreaming about hoses, pump-overs and various forms of heavy equipment; I’ve learned a lot about acid, alcohols, R-P, pressing methods/seeds, the Australian palate, the Italian palate, the flavor dramas of fermentation and also the nature of rot.  I’ve also had my nose buried in Fugelsang’s Wine Analysis and Production (which is about as an exciting a read as the Ohio state legal code, but probably the best educational text I’ve read in terms of amount and delivery of information) and have emerged from it with lots of fun facts about how to better make wine.  These things have all inspired new topics, of which you will get to see shortly.  In the meantime, I have some traveling to do.  As I leave Australia, I get to see the wonderful Margaret Mann in Japan, (hopefully) the musical Gregor Penczek and Martin Skutzik in Thailand and the existential Alwyn Loh in Singapore.  Can’t wait.  Talk to you soon.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Posted on by
4

It’s safe to say that rain is bad for wine-grapes.  Grape-growers fear it like I feared that big kid with anger issues in middle school.  That is why it’s been so wonderful that Australia has experienced an unexpected Monsoon season right in the middle of harvest.  The rain has been long and over-whelming, pouring heavily on us for days.  We’ve been missing work waiting on the rain and even though it finally ended Sunday, the dam in the local area is so loaded up with water it’s ruptured and today we had to be evacuated from the winery to avoid the incoming floods.  (I’d tell you more, but they didn’t tell us much in the first place, and there are no local news stations out here)

So it’s not actually raining this hard.

With all this drama over water, water and more water, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and reading deeper into what I know about rain. The issue with rain is very simple: it promotes rot and it promotes fruit bloating.  We’ll tackle those one at a time.

Rot.  Sounds pretty gnarly, doesn’t it?  The thing is when your apples at home go rotten, you throw them out.  However, if you are making wine in the Napa Valley and it rains, not making wine that year is not really an option, so what happens is the grapes arrive in the winery and the winemaker and the fruit begin to wage war.  Besides just being icky, the rot impacts almost every aspect of the wine- it releases a small army of enzymes that start processes the winemaker simply doesn’t want to see happen.  These enzymes negatively affect color, fruit aromas and also make the wine oxidize more easily.  The rot itself (which is really just mold) actually eats up much of the acid and the nutrients in the grape needed for yeast and to boot, it releases lots of vinegar producing microbes.  …wow, that was a long list of bad things.  This is why wine-makers hate rain, and the closer to harvest you are, the more damage it does.

They call it the Noble rot, but it’s usually not so noble…

Bloating.  No, we’re not talking about how you feel after a few too many hot-dogs.  This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: the fruit fills up with water.  This means you lose sugar concentration as well as concentration in general.  During most of the season, growers will often intentionally with-hold water to increase concentration, so when the rain comes, it undoes a lot of the work the grower has been trying to do.

So here we are in Australia, picking up the scraps after Monsoon Season 2012.  Hopefully, we can salvage a vintage after this.  The weather after rains makes a big impact on what grows on the vine.  Unfortunately, it’s not our decision what happens from here on out, it’s just up to the weather.

*Hard-core wine nerd note- Rot does have one positive note- it promotes the metabolism of polyhydric alcohols or “sugar alcohols”, which is a terrifying name for equally scary-named glycerol, mannitol, erythritol (I’m hoping I never have to pronounce that one out loud), arabitol, sorbitol, xylitol and myo-inositol.  Although mannitol has a little of a bad rap, generally, these compounds (especially glycerol) are purported to provide a soft sweetness with a round-ness on the palate and fuller mouth-feel.

*Personal note- did anyone understand the hard-core wine nerd note?

Viva Italia

Posted on by
2

So Italian wine is a little, err… different.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing them to my mom’s favorite asparagus recipes (love you, mom!) but there’s no denying that Italian wine-making often times accomplishes a different set of goals than California wine-making.  For those that don’t know, Italian, as well as most European wines- French wine especially, are known for higher acids and less alcohol, but just as much- more earthy flavors as opposed to fruity flavors, as well as less body than American wines.  These attributes have always been ascribed as positive characteristics if you enjoy the style, because they develop wines that age well and compare to American wines in flavor much the same way coffee does to fruit juice.  (Ok, that’s not really fair, cuz I love coffee WAY more than fruit juice)

I always figured this was because French and Italian winemakers just have different goals than we Americans.  Sommeliers definitely seem to.  They go nuts over wild yeast smells and other “old world” smells.  I figured someday I’d have to make a trip to Europe and see how the old-school of wine does it.  But then I moved to Australia, and I met Edoardo and Niccolo.

I have to say, I love these guys, they are intensely passionate about what they do, are deeply compassionate, love gastronomy, are kind, giving and so endearingly Italian their accents would embarrass a Super Mario.  As interesting as they are culturally, they are both talented and brilliant Italian wine-makers.  Edoardo is the most outspoken of the group, and when we started talking about our different wine-making philosophy, something he is not shy about, I expected it to be like something out of one a mid-90’s Jackie Chan film, a humorous mis-match of characters.  (I also like to imagine that we would fight crime together)  But what surprised me, actually, what shocked me, was how similar we were.

This is what it feels like I every time I come over.  It’s AWESOME!  The guys are great hosts.

So far, Eduardo, Niccolo and I have gotten together and exchanged meals from our home countries, they’ve made traditional Italian dishes, and I’ve made, well, hot dogs.  This week it’s burgers.  We’ve sat and we’ve talked wine.  It’s amazing to me how the Italian palate likes the gentle fruitiness of plums and berries of Shiraz as much if not more than I do, and that they are more forgiving of prominent alcohol than I am (that really surprised me) and so far, we’ve liked the same wines.  I’ve also noticed that all that wine funk that we American winemakers look at in disgust (such as sulfur off-flavors, spoilage yeast and oxidation) they look on with equal disgust.  When talking about Brettanomyces, Edoardo wrinkles his nose, sneers, and shakes his head a lot, a much more honest version of what I would say about the same thing.

The one difference that I have noticed between them and myself is a taste for acid.  As an American wine-maker, the primary goal of acid use is just to make sure you don’t confuse my wine with grape-juice.   For them, however, it is a mandatory necessity, and they seem to enjoy it flavor-wise.  Having your acid right makes the process of wine-making go a lot easier, but American wine-makers seem more willing to wrestle with the problems of lower acids than do the Italians (and the Australians, for that matter).  I think what I’ve probably learned here is that the Italian palate is very open-minded, that fruity smells are every much as enjoyable to the Italian winemaker as is a dark, earthy red.  Also, I would guess that there is a relationship between the open-minded-ness towards acid and a different perception of wines that some Americans might find austere.  There may be less need for fruit and the “sweetness” derived from higher alcohols, high levels of oak and other natural poly-saccharides (scary word!  just means stuff it the grape that gives sweet taste) when you have more of a appreciation for acid.

Maybe next time I see them (hopefully soon!) we should have a toast to acid!

AUSTRALIA!

Posted on by
2

How you going?

Ok, does that sound grammatically incorrect to anyone else?  It sounds like you forgot a few words or something.  Syntax errors aside, however, this is the Australian version of “How’s it going?” in the good ol’ Red, White and Blue.  Australia has offered plenty of things to throw me off, like charging $4 for a 20oz soda, but all things considered, this is one of the most beautiful, remarkable, interesting and well-spirited countries I have ever been to.

The Riverina, Australia's volume wine producer, and my current home.

I have started work as a press monkey at the mega-winery Casella.  The biggest surprise was a completely un-related to wine: I was part of a wave of immigrant labor brought in to work the vintage, traveling great lengths for the sole purpose of earning more money than they receive at home to obtain their goals.  Only, these aren’t immigrants from economically distressed nations.  This tidal wave of migrant labor is composed of Germans, Brits, Frenchmen, Germans, Koreans, Estonians, Germans, Swedes, Italians and more Germans.  They are all back-packers, and they are here to earn money to fund their travels around the world.

This of course, has made for a very interesting work environment.  I also live with them in a hostel, which has been exciting because every day is a cultural exchange: I learn about customs and habits of their nations, as well as the foods, beers and politics, while I teach them about mine.  (I am the only American in the 150 people at the hostel, the owner said I’m only the third American the hostel has ever seen.  Nuts.)  It’s all been very cool, but the biggest thing I’ve learned from everyone is just how similar everyone is, both at home and abroad.

Fun Fact: I cannot catch a kangaroo.

The winery itself is probably visible from space.  It’s simply goliath.  The presses are in full “go” mode and right now we’re bouncing some 1,000 tonnes of grapes through every day, pushing through a lot of Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon through presses twice the size of my first apartment.  Things have been a lot of fun so far, as we have a lot of work to do to get all that wine done, and I have been promised that I will be kept abreast of the wine-making master plan once things start to calm down for the wine-makers.  I’m looking forward to this harvest: it will definitely be a very unique experience in my life.

More updates to follow.

Cheers.

Bottle Friday- Starborough

Posted on by
Reply

Starborough Sauvignon Blanc

Marlborough, New Zealand, 2010

Price: $10-

Before I start on this, I have to warn you: this is my first time writing a blog wine description, (I may have published a couple more, but this is the first I wrote) if that’s what you want to call it.  When I first started the concept of the blog, I initially didn’t think I would delve into this, but the more I think about it, we wine junkies, this is what we live for: for most of the world, wine is a beverage, like coffee, it tastes good to us (or not) it has a desired effect and we go on to whatever’s next in the day.  That’s fine, maybe even normal, but we cork-heads don’t think of it that way: for us wine is an intellectual pursuit, the fascination of different creative expressions as given to us by deft winemakers and mother earth intrigues us, and that art is so subjective, the discussion of said art is an intellectual debate that stimulates us, and part of the reason we drink.

So this is at foray into that intellectual discussion.  Bear with me.  For my this Bottle Friday, I chose a wine I happen to know well: Starborough.  It’s a Gallo product and I got to see the final blends put together for the 2011 product at the Healdsburg plant where I spent harvest.  I also got to raid out-going library inventory, which may or may not be where this bottle came from.

I don’t remember if I was able to confirm this (and if I was, would I be able to tell you? …the plot thickens…)  but this very much the type of wine that would be a product of the whole-sale wine market.  What does that mean?  No, Gallo is not buying nor selling this wine exclusively through Costco.  The whole-sale market, is when a winery acts as a “negociant” and buys other wineries’ extra wine and then blends them to make the best possible wine they can.  It would make sense then, for Starborough to be a great representation of Marlborough in 2010.

And that’s exactly what it is.  For those of you not familiar with Marlborough, or New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, the first thing this wine does for you is jump out of the glass with the flavors of asparagus, green Bell Pepper, lemon and grapefruit.  However, after letting it air out a bit, I noticed quite a bit of white pepper and a bit of lychee as well.

But how does it taste?  The answer to that question is pretty simple: like acid.  If you’re the type to enjoy eating grapefruit straight, you’re going to like this wine quite a bit.  It’s very crisp, bordering on being just simply tart.  When I decided to think about what was in my mouth other than just acid, I did notice that is was a little fuller bodied than most Savvi’s, but really, that’s like noticing the color of the smoke when your house is on fire.

So food?  I’d imagine a bunch of you already have ideas about how to pair a good Sauvignon Blanc- salads, fish and poultry, and the standard light fare.  What did I pair the wine with?  Tyson’s Buffalo-style Chicken Strips.  It worked beautifully, for those not yet familiar, acidity cools off spiciness, and this was definitely a war of wills between the Sauvignon Blanc and the chicken’s heat, but I enjoyed it.

I guess what I’m getting at, after all of that, is I would recommend this wine; but you have to be ready for some acid.  It’s a good wine, lots of flavor and great to pair with food.  For $10?  I highly recommend it.  Definitely worth your money.