Barrel Fever

This week we moved the 2009 reds out of barrels so we could get them off their fermentation lees and start blending the Field Cuvee and the different parcels of Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc.

Moving wine from barrels is much more logistically complicated than moving wine from a tank. The barrels are each 60 gallons. We pumped them into holding tanks one by one; Cab Franc in one tank, Pinot in one, the elements of Field Cuvee blended together in another. We let the wine stay in the tanks overnight to settle out. Meanwhile, we cleaned the barrels and arranged them for re-filling.

Barrels are heavy even when empty so there is some strategy involved in moving them around. Cleaning barrels is the fun part but it can get really tiring after a while. It is important to clean them well since the wood is porous and exposed to the elements. To clean them we fill them with some water and then roll them back and forth in a swift motion, creating a wave action inside that agitates any solids and splashes the whole area. We do 3 rinses: cold - hot/steam - cold. After they're rinsed we dry them out overnight and fill them the next day.

I cleaned 34 barrels in 2 days, 17 per day! The third day we set and filled the rest. And on the fourth day I rested.

Sugar Rush

We've been preparing to bottle our 2009 wine designated for sparkling. We're making a Blanc de Blanc (from Chardonnay) and a Cuvee Brut Rose (from Pinot Noir). We've filtered the base wine and last week we added the sugar, moving the wine from one tank to another and mixing the sugar continuously so it dissolved. This was fun :) Next we have to add yeast to the base wine to kickstart the second fermentation, which will convert the added sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide will be trapped in the bottle, and this is what makes the wine bubble. We'll also add riddling agents to help the yeast coagulate once they have finished their task.

Sugar: check
Yeast: on deck
Riddling agents: on deck

Child of the 80's

Yesterday a customer called and said he had a bottle of Hermann J. Wiemer's 1987 Bunch Select Late Harvest Riesling (this is our TBA style dessert wine where we hand select every single botrytised berry) and he wanted to come to the tasting room and share it with us. We were so excited! Steve arrived with two bottles and we opened one. The cork was in great shape and the wine was a gorgeous golden color. It smelled like apricot with a touch of gasoline - very pleasant for those who love the smell of pumping gas, like me. It was a touch oxidized on the palate and tasted very Sherry-like, with a creamy nuttiness and a bit of stone fruit pitiness. Very interesting. It wasn't as sweet as I expected it to be, despite the 9.8% residual sugar. Perhaps that had something to do with the oxidation. The label was one we hadn't seen before from the Wiemer collection. I personally had never seen such an old bottle of Hermann's! This was a great way to end the week. Thank you again, Steve!

When you're quite finished!

Last week we finally called it quits on our last 2 fermenting tanks. 2 tanks of Riesling were still going, after 9 months of fermentation! We like to let the wines ferment as they will, so usually in the winter they'll slow down or stop, but instead of adding yeast to get them going again we'll just wait - and then without fail they'll kick up again in the spring. Maybe it's the spring moon or just the rising temperatures, but either way things kick up. So after putting together our various Rieslings from all the different tanks we decided these last 2 were ready to stop. Now they've joined their friends in going through cold stabilization. Which I have to say is like natural air conditioning for the winery in these hot temperatures.

Blend, baby, Blend

This week we released a new wine: Field Cuvee 2007. This is a red blend that until now used to be called Estate Red.  Field Cuvee 2007 is dominated by Cabernet Franc and Merlot, followed by Lemberger, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pinot Noir. Hermann originally planted some of these varieties for the nursery business to provide bud material for grafting. We vinify Cab Franc and Pinot Noir as single varietals. Depending on the vintage we'll also do a Merlot. But we'll always have a blend with these 5 grapes, and from now on it will be known as Field Cuvee. It's a medium-bodied red with a lot of bright fruit that is easy to drink and will go well with many foods from BBQ to pizza.

The Cuvee line of wines is our blended line, with a different label to distinguish it from the rest of our wines - which are single varietals that are named on the label. It was first unveiled last summer with Frost Cuvee 2008, a white blend of Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Chardonnay.

Blends are nice because they can bring out the best of each variety. If you can't decide on one grape, blend, baby, blend!

Unrelated: Apparently John Travolta has bought a house on Keuka Lake, which is west of Seneca. I've called dibs on his tasting if he comes to the winery!

Gewurztrameeter

Over the weekend we hosted a great event at Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard featuring tank/barrel samples and a live jazz band. We focused on Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Cabernet Franc - the 3 top varietals of the Finger Lakes. We offered 3 vintages of each, including the current 2009 release still in tanks/barrels. I hosted the Gewurz table, where I poured the 2006 and 2008 vintages plus a tank sample of the 2009 vintage, just filtered on Friday. I first had the 2006 Gewurztraminer in February when I brought a bottle down to Argentina and loved it. The 2008 Gewurz is one of my current favorites. And the 2009 Gewurz is going to be great - it's got a lot of concentration. These wines paired great with Chef Michael Murphy's spicy shrimp and his tarragon and mustard seed chicken salad.

Here's what one fan and fellow blogger had to say about the event:
http://www.livelifeeatright.com/2010/06/27/let-there-be-riesling/

Pictures to come!

Who's your Pinot?

The other night after a long day of work we did a Hermann J. Wiemer Pinot Noir flight that was really interesting - 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and barrel sample 2009. The 2009 barrels are tasting very complex and interesting; they won't be blended and bottled for some time still. The 2008 has been bottled but it isn't released yet; the flavor is really intense and it's going to be a good one. (2008 was just a great vintage all around for us). 2007 is the current release that is out now, and it overflows with bright cherry and spice - actually very similar to the 2008. 2006 was a cold, wet year so this Pinot is very light with some muted cherry and a bit of earthiness. 2004 was fantastic - very smooth with velvety tannin and a lot of beet and blackberry - very different from the others.

We had an event at the winery over the weekend and Fred brought out some of the 2004 Pinot Noir - it was a huge hit. There are still a few more bottles left at $30 each...

So hot right now

Can the FLX get any better? The west side of Seneca Lake, with its many wineries dotting Route 14, now has its very own WIENERY, and it is just 5 minutes from HJW! I could not be more excited.

I have been driving by this property for a week waiting for the "Coming Soon" sign to read "Now Open" and today was the day. They serve 6 different types of hot dogs, including 2 varieties of Hofmann's from Syracuse. I got a Hofmann's White with a side of honey baked beans (which I then put on the dog) and it was delicious - salty, sweet, and a little spicy. They also have root beer on tap and Hershey's ice cream. This is going to be bad, having this wienery so close to the winery, and on my way home from work too...

Filter this

Last week at HJW we started filtering! This was very exciting. Filtering is one of the last steps before bottling. Essentially, in the simplest terms, the winemaking process goes like this: pick the grapes, press the juice, rack (transfer) the juice off the solids, ferment the grape juice (thereby converting the sugar to alcohol by action of yeast), rack off the fermentation lees and tartrates, cold stabilize (lower the temperature of the tank to about 35 degrees F) to further precipitate out any tartrates, filter, blend and bottle. So filtering is a big step. We use a very fine (0.2 micron) cross-flow filter:

We started on Wednesday and in 3 days we filtered the components of Frost Cuvee (our white blend), a couple of tanks of Riesling, and Gewurztraminer. We still have a lot of tanks to go, but it's very exciting because once the wine is filtered we will make final blending decisions and then bottle it.

Hey Mr. Postman, look and see...

Finally we finished putting the posts in the second new vineyard plot at HJW! This plot, like the first one, is all Riesling. Just north of the winery you can see this new vineyard along Route 14.

But there was more... a small section in the Magdalena vineyard. This was a quickie - only took a day and a half. Here we have Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Franc.  All our reds are planted on the Magdalena site since it is the warmest. We have Chardonnay at HJW and Magdalena.

The plants look great and are all tied and contained. In 3 years we'll be able to make wine from these sections. Wine from young vines can be very interesting and great - in fact, I recently learned that our Reserve Cabernet Franc 2007 came from a section of the Magdalena vineyard site that was planted in 2004, and you can taste the difference from our regular Cab Franc that was planted in the late 90's. The Reserve Cab Franc is very complex and rewarding, with smooth tannin and flavors that will definitely age well in the bottle.

Speaking of vineyard plots, we're continuing to move wines from the 2009 vintage that have finished their fermentations and making blending decisions. Since we vinify vineyard plots separately, around this time of year its time to decide how to blend the final wine. We base this on the varying flavors, sweetness, and acidity of the different tanks. Fred, our winemaker, is a master blender. In France he would be called a Chef du Caves. It is fun to taste the different components of a blend and then the way they come together.

Last week we worked on the Semi-Dry Riesling. This is one of our top sellers - we'll make about 3000 cases of it. We're also getting the Chardonnay cuvee ready to become sparkling blanc de blanc - which literally means white of white but refers to sparkling wine made from white grapes.  So, we moved the Chard cuvee from barrels to tank for cold stabilization, which helps with tartrate precipitation. Then we'll filter it and bottle it for the second fermentation, which will make the still wine sparkle.

Btw, I've been getting into stainless steel tanks to clean them and it is pretty fun. When I was a kid growing up with 3 siblings I fashioned a solitary space underneath an end table in our living room and hung out there with my books and toys. I find a similar comfort inside a stainless steel tank. Except instead of books and toys there are tartrate crystals, fermentation lees, and a lot of water :)