Hi deer, how are you?

It was bound to happen. After almost 3 months of zipping around the Finger Lakes I was bound to hit a deer. I just didn't expect it to hit me on a pretty main road at nightfall when there were tons of cars out at the same time. It came out of nowhere, and suddenly I saw a flash of fur against my window and heard a piercing crash as it knocked my rearview mirror off the car. Luckily that was really the only damage my car suffered...

I screamed like a baby but I am fine now. I think the deer made it too. I looked for it the next day and didn't see anything.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey, cranberry sauce, butternut squash risotto, and Wiemer Rieslings... yum!

We had the Dry Riesling '08 and the Semi Dry Riesling '07.
The Magnum looked awesome on the table...

(I had it autographed by Fred, the winemaker)

Hope everyone had a great holiday with family and friends.

Can't wait for '08

We've been slowly rolling out the '08 vintage and they have been fantastic - I've mentioned how much I love the '08 Gewurz and the '08 Late Harvest Riesling. Last night I got to taste some more '08s, including the Dry Riesling, Reserve Dry Riesling, HJW Dry Riesling, and Magdalena Dry Riesling. What a crew! These wines are delicious. I particularly love the HJW and Magdalena single-vineyard bottlings. It is so interesting to taste the differences due to the variances in these 2 vineyard sites. Soil and mesoclimate are the main factors that contribute to the contrast in these 2 wines - the Magdalena site is a few degrees warmer, and note the soil differences here between all 3 sites: 

Of course, it's the blending from the 3 sites that results in the consistency and vibrancy of the Dry Riesling and the elegance of the Reserve Dry Riesling.

Check out what James Molesworth of Wine Spectator had to say about these members of the 2008 Riesling lineup:  http://www.winespectator.com/blogs/show/id/41236

A couple more unreleased wines that I got to try: 2008 Select Late Harvest Riesling (a beautiful dessert wine with honeyed apricots on the palate) and 2003 Blanc de Noir (85% Pinot Noir and 15% Chardonnay - sparkling wine) that sat on the lees for 4.5 years before disgorging (nutty, brioche character with really fine, well-integrated bubbles on the palate).

Harvesting Roots

Thought the harvest was over, didn't you?! The last 2 days we spent harvesting rootstock in the Wiemer nursery. Grafting rootstock is a big part of Wiemer's business. Vineyards around the country source their rootstock from us, and this is a continuation of Hermann's legacy. Not only was he a pioneer in bringing Riesling to the Finger Lakes, he was also responsible for supplying the Finger Lakes and other areas with quality grafted vines. Now for a brief wine geek history: in the late 19th century European vineyards were wiped out by the root louse, phylloxera. Native to American rootstock, our vines are resistant to it. But, European grapes (vitis vinifera) make better wines, so we and the rest of the wine-making world now use grafted vines of vitis vinifera on American rootstock.

Grafting at Wiemer takes place over the winter, and then the grafted plants go into the ground in the spring so they can develop a root system. In late fall (now) the young roots are harvested and then distributed throughout the country for new vineyards or replacements. Harvesting these little plants is what I imagine harvesting Cabbage Patch Kids would be like (minus the tractor and plow).

So the tractor/plow pulls up all the rootstems and then we follow it to collect and bundle them. Funny enough, a lot of the plants have 1 or 2 shoots already, so they look kind of like the ridiculous antlers that the Grinch puts on his dog before he rides into town to steal Christmas:

These are the types of things that go through my mind when I am doing fieldwork. Anyway, we were lucky to have 2 gorges days of sunshine for this harvest. We also had 3 Mennonite boys helping us; I wondered yesterday why they weren't in school, but I learned that the Mennonites are only schooled through 8th grade. After that, they just work and get married and have babies, or whatever. Fascinating.

Wines of Spain - que ganga!

Over the weekend my sister Zara came to visit and experienced dinner and wine tasting with the Wiemer crew. Usually people bring random wine and we blind taste and try to see who can get the most points for the best guesses. But, this time we decided to organize the education process a little bit by focusing on wines of Spain. Maressa made delicious paella and we each brought a Spanish wine. We learned the following: 1) most mainstream Spanish reds are made from Tempranillo and Garnacha, 2) the Spanish white grape Albarino is pretty reliable, and 3) Spanish wines are a great value! Not 1 bottle cost over $20, and we enjoyed all of them. Zara was a little nervous about her wine (I sent her to get a Garnacha) but it was a hit - 2007 Tres Picos Borsao ($16.99). Joe brought the only white - 2008 Martin Codax Albarino Rias Baixas ($12.99), which we both really liked. I did pretty well too with a classic - 2005 Marques de Caceres Rioja Crianza ($14.99). So glad Fred thought of this theme! Maybe Italy will be next... I could use a refresher on that country too.

Spotlight: Peter, the Argentine

This post is dedicated to Peter, who left a week ago to go back to his vineyard in Argentina. Peter is actually from the States originally but bought a vineyard in Mendoza about 5 years ago. He grows Malbec and Tempranillo and came to Wiemer to learn about white wine production and sweet wine production - he loves the sweet stuff and is considering planting Torrontes, a white grape, in his vineyard for sweet wine production. So our little mini cuvee of TBA Gewurz was a special project for him. (As a side note, we got a little more than one 375 ml bottle, so we had everyone here sample the extra. We are going to let the bottle chill out for a couple months and then meet up to share it. We suspect that the alcohol is around 12%, which is a little higher than we would have liked, but the wine has pretty aromas of lychee and grapefruit with a nice texture and sweetness on the palate. We are pretty proud of our efforts and the result!)

Peter's vineyard is called Los Vencejos, and it is named for the white-collared birds who swoop in after rainfalls. We tried his 2007 Malbec before he left and it was just beautiful - a full-bodied red with blackberry jam and spicy notes rounded out by vanilla flavors from new and old French oak. Peter imports the wine to California for shipping to certain states around the country - including NY! (http://www.losvencejos.com/)

At the winery we could always count on Peter to brew a pot of coffee before the night shift, and he was a champion when it came to polishing off the locally-baked donuts that Tim and Sandy would bring us. Although, I once ate 5 donuts in a day and everyone seemed to think that was excessive, but I bet Peter came close on some days and just never counted. On the days that he wasn't at work they never seemed to go quite as fast. Hope you aren't missing the donuts too much, Peter! I think we decided the closest Argentine equivalent would be churros... not quite the same...

A noble end to the harvest

This week we finished harvest by scouring the vineyards for botrytis. We had left certain bunches on the vines to allow the botrytis to develop so it could be saved for Bunch Select Late Harvest Riesling (a TBA style). Maressa and I trolled Magdalena and Josef to collect the last shrivelly bunches, and then the rest of us spent a couple days sorting for the best stuff. We used the old Rotapress to press the bunches, and the thick syrupy juice tasted so good. This is going to be a great dessert wine.

As the harvest has now officially ended, I can say that I am really excited for the 2009 vintage to come out next year and in the years that follow; we brought in some beautiful fruit, and the juice and now-fermenting wines have been tasting amazing. So excited!

Hotelie Dinner

Last night I attended a student-run dinner at Taverna Banfi in the Statler Hotel at Cornell University with Fred and Oskar. It was a 3-course dinner featuring Wiemer wines as part of a restaurant management course in the School of Hotel Administration. The students were very professional and did a great job executing the dinner. The pairing was delicious, starting with the 2003 Blanc de Noir + cheese course and followed by this lineup:

These 2 Rieslings are among my favorite Wiemer wines, but I particularly appreciated the Pinot Noir + lamb pairing, and I don't think I've ever enjoyed that wine as much as I did last night. Special thanks to Fred and Oskar for taking me to the dinner and to the HA 3305 class for a memorable dining experience!

Blueberries?

Over the weekend we harvested the last of the reds - Cabernet Franc, Lemberger, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. After seeing all these grapes I can now appreciate all the pretty colors that appear in red wine making. The berries are blue upon picking...

...and turn purple as they go through fermentation. The juice goes from virtually clear to pink to red, depending on the amount of skin contact and whether the fermentation occurs on or off the skins (rose vs. red wine). Here, I'm punching Cabernet Franc that is fermenting on the skins:

Punching the reds is a great way to warm up when you are freezing from sorting and cleaning outside. In terms of snacking, the Lemberger grapes were my favorite - I could eat those any day. Would be a healthier alternative to donuts :)

Sounds of the Sorting Table

As you now know, sorting the grapes before they go into the crusher/de-stemmer and/or the press is an important part of the winemaking process at Wiemer.  You can imagine that we have bonded over this process. Following is a little sampling of the sounds of the sorting table:

- Oskar breaking into random song
- Peter humming tunes he makes up in his head
- Alex practicing his V's
- Political debate followed by Maressa shouting "No politics at the sorting table!"
- Cries of "Wait! I heard a rock!"
- Random trivia on world geography
- Bets made over baseball scores, number of boxes of grapes picked, whether Tim and Sandy will bring us donuts, timing of the arrival of grapes from our 3 vineyard sites, and timing for Fred to say, "I think we're in good shape here," which means we can go home to bed :)

Cheers to the Sorters!

The Tresterband

The Tresterband is a machine that pushes grape refuse up and away, into a bin placed strategically next to it. It is particularly useful for catching grape skins when we clean the presses and stems when the grapes go through the crusher/de-stemmer.  Peter has said in the past that The Tresterband is overrated; he thinks the job can easily be done by man using a shovel. I think the Tresterband is pretty cool, and why kill your back shoveling the stuff when the Tresterband can do it so easily for you? Well today I tried to prove to Peter (not so much on purpose) that the Tresterband rocks - I miscalculated the amount of skins still left in the press, so when we moved the Tresterband away and turned the press, a whole mess of skins came out that had to be shoveled out from under the press. This job took both Peter and me, yet he still insisted that the Tresterband is overrated. Maybe I better screw up again tomorrow so he can see how old shoveling out from under the press gets :)

Spotlight: Alex, the German intern

This past week we were sad because Alex went back to Germany. So this post is dedicated to him. Alex is studying at the Geisenheim, and his family owns Stauffer Winery (www.weingutstauffer.de). We had a lovely bottle of his the other night made from the Fruhburgunder grape. It is a cousin of Pinot Noir so it had similar characteristics on the palate and a nose of cherry and black tea that I loved.

One of Alex's jobs was to clean the presses every day - he would often get inside them to do a thorough job. The presses are German-made and have their commands in German, so who better for the job?

My favorite thing about Alex was that when he ran out of groceries he would stop at Dunkin Donuts in the morning to load up for the day - 3 donuts for breakfast and 3 donuts for lunch. Sometimes he would throw in a banana or apple and a Red Bull. Wunderbar! (Pronounced 'voon da bah,' means "Wonderful," and is my favorite German word.) Miss you, Predator!

Feelin' Gewurzy

On Halloween we released Wiemer's 2008 Gewurztraminer. In an earlier post I mentioned that I had tried this wine. I have been asking almost daily when it would be released, and the day finally arrived! Previously I had been in a 3-way tie with myself for which Wiemer wine I liked best - '07 Dry Riesling, '08 Late Harvest Riesling, and '07 Gewurz, but now I have a new favorite in the '08 Gewurz. I LOVE this wine. It is beautiful and flowery with tropical fruit on the palate and just a touch of sweetness. I bought a half case yesterday. Keep your eyes open for this one in your 'hood!