The Red Stuff...Part 1

 Back in early September, when Sinead and I were planning our respective trips for the Harvest, the plan was that Sinead would come first to harvest and vinify our own Sipon (Furmint). I would then arrive about 10 days later and harvest and vinify some Modra Frankinja we had agreed to buy, as we don’t have any MF vines ourselves. But Nature again conspired to change things a little and it turned out that the MF reached optimum maturity earlier than the Sipon, so Sinead found herself immersed in sticky red stuff rather than sticky clear stuff!

We have been interested in Modra Frankinja for a while now. Known more commonly as Blaufrankisch (in Austria where it is planted more widely) it is a variety that we believe has great potential here in the clay-dominated soils of Jeruzalem. It is a late ripening variety, with vibrant fruit aromas of sour cherry, fruits of the forest , herbs and spices. On the palate it is savoury, with an elegance not dissimilar to a hypothetical blend of Barbera and Pinot Noir. Some would include descriptors akin to a Syrah, or even Nebbiolo, but our preferred style is the fruit-forward, savoury cherry/plum style. It can handle oak reasonably well, but larger, old barrels tend to accentuate the finer characteristics better, rather than a whack of new oak.

A couple of local producers grow Modra Frankinja and we had been to visit one vineyard back in August and agreed to purchase just over half a ton of grapes at harvest time. Sinead was there on the day (Thursday September 22nd) and ended up with exactly 677 kilos of grapes being dropped off at Miro’s cellars. Quality was excellent, with no rot. Sugar was 91 Oechsle which is bang on the nose for a 12.5% alcohol wine. So things were looking good. Acidity was 5.5 g/l and Ph 3.41.

We had decided in advance that we would vinify it in different batches – primarily to look at how different fermentation procedures impacted on the final wine. The grapes were de-stemmed and split into two batches:

1. About 250 kilos went into a steel tank that we wanted to undergo a pre-fermentation cold maceration. This would delay the fermentation and allow for a more gentle aqueous extraction (rather than alcoholic extraction during fermentation) of the colour, tannins and polyphenols from the skins. Sinead and Miro worked their wonders with some hosepipes and got cold water circulating through the tank that would keep the must lower than 15 Celsius for the next 3 days. I had also wanted to try gently bubbling some Co2 through the must – something that Emmanuel Rouget told us he did – to try and add some “lift” and “elegance” to the maceration. Again, a make-shift device was assembled and sure enough, some CO2 worked its way through the cold must – until we promptly ran out of CO2!
2. The second, slightly larger, batch went into a 500 kilo plastic “box” – the way that many local producers would ferment their red wines here – including Pinot Noir. The box is can be covered to protect the must, but can easily be opened for punchdowns. Crucially, this box was also left up at ground level and so settled down at a much higher temperature quite quickly – around 20 Celsius.

Sinead did punchdowns on both batches twice a day. By Sunday 25th fermentation had started in the larger Box – no added yeast, just whatever came in on the grapes. Temperatures during fermentation rose no higher than 24 Celsius and the main part was finished by Thursday 29th – so just under a week from picking to when we decided to Press. At that point we had sugars of about 30 Oechsle (effectively a dry wine) and we decided that we had enough extraction and tannins to proceed with pressing – we didn’t want too much extraction.

Meanwhile, in our steel tank, things were moving a lot more slowly…. in a good way. We had already decided that we would inoculate this batch with a cultured yeast – one normally used for Pinot Noir – again, too see how it would impact on the final wine as a comparison. On the Sunday evening (after 4 days cold maceration) we stopped the cooling and added the yeast. Fermentation took another 2 days to get going, so by now we were about 6 days behind the Box fermentation.

So by the Thursday, from the same harvested grapes, we had one batch (the Box) almost finished the main part of fermentation and being Pressed – and the other (the Steel) just really beginning…. both had punchdowns twice a day, but already it was clear we had two very different wines….

 

Thrills, Spills and fun with Acid...

Well – I have finally discovered what Twitter is for! The number of times over the past fortnight that I wished I could have tapped a spontaneous Tweet to the listening world (maybe 2 people?) isn’t worth counting. But even if I was technically minded enough, I suppose sticky fingers would have rendered my attempts useless. A Blog seemed like a good idea a while back, but actually getting the time to update it regularly has been a challenge – not for the lack of stuff to write about, but more a case of trying to find the time to do the actual writing….

So it’s Harvest 2011 time. A brief summary of the key background info and characters so far: I’m here in Slovenia – Sinead was here last week and started the ball rolling in a scarily competent fashion. The weather has been unusually warm and sunny, leading to a large, yet high quality, harvest. This is true across all varietals, with Sauvignon Blanc and Modra Frankinja (Blaufrankisch) doing particularly well. Lower than normal acidity levels are a slight concern. An early flowering and slightly disjointed growing season have led to a few quirks in the final fruit – some slight similarities to the hot 2003 (low acids), yet no burnt characters.

 

This year, we have decided to go it totally alone and make our own wine. Well, almost. Our good friend, neighbour and great wine producer, Miro has been a great source of inspiration and restrained observation – it’s a bit like being encouraged to go and use a trampoline, to be greeted by a shrug of the shoulders when you ask if you can try a triple somersault (“why not?”), knowing that it could end in failure when you splat yourself on the ground in an ugly mess! And only yourself to blame…

And to complicate matters somewhat (in a good way!), we decided to make not only White wine from our own Sipon (Furmint) vines, but also some Red. We purchased just over half a Ton of Modra Frankinja grapes to try some trials on.

This is the first time I have actually stopped long enough to consider what we’re actually doing (quite scary really) and to scribble a couple of notes.

There have been stand-up shouting matches, endless discussions about various procedures, periods of bewilderment (many, many!), moments of elation and a peculiar desire to continually admit that lack of knowledge is actually more of an asset that too much knowledge – at least that way you can get away with claiming you didn’t realise you were doing something wrong!

So there’s plenty more to follow in the next few Blogs…… but in the interim, here are a few brief thoughts on what I have learnt...so far...

1. Although unconventional, always have someone else start the process for you. If it all goes wrong you can blame them… or if it all works out, you can claim you corrected their mistakes! This year, Sinead was here for 9 days before me…. and I arrived very nervous and feeling out-of-my-depth. A few days hard graft and you’re too tired to figure out anything much more that what time you have to get up in the morning.
2. The nicest, most refreshing treat at the end of a long day in the vineyard or winery is....… a bottle of cold beer!
3. Acid is your friend – and your enemy. It’s like that girlfriend that wrecks your head – attractive, yet distractingly frustrating. Sugar is easy – it’s a simple compound and you either have it or you don't to start with, and you know it's just going to change into boring old alcohol in a predictable manner. Acidity is an ever-changing multi-faceted beast, manifesting itself in many different ways throughout the winemaking process and the resulting “flavour” of a wine is a complex concoction of many different acids. It comes and goes, rises and falls and trying to get a reasonable grip on it will be a never ending challenge. Men are like sugar, women are like acidity.
4. Never, ever pick stuck and clogged stems out of the cylindrical “grater” of a de-stemmer running at full throttle. It seems like a good idea at the time (why switch it off – it’ll only waste time?) but trust me, you’ll only do it once. And if you’re lucky, like me, your fingers will get a whack – but at least you’ll still have them….. 
5. Hindsight is a great thing in winemaking – and there’s always next year….
6. For all the romantic ideas that winemaking conjures up, cleaning the inside of a pneumatic press whilst accompanied by swarming wasps and fruit flies is decidedly un-romantic.
7. On the subject of fruit flies, they must have a pretty sad, short life (or maybe it’s just one big, and short, wine-fuelled Party?) but quite literally at the top of the pile of crap wine-making jobs is standing atop of a huge pile of pulp from the presses when another half-ton of hot, smelly, fly-infested pulp is emptied onto it to be raked out. There a literally millions of the buggers… no, they don’t bite, but they crawl inside every part of your clothing and into every orifice in your body. Yes, I know….
8. Good Music is essential for Good Winemaking. Dodgy Austrian radio stations blaring 1980’s techno-pop will turn your wine to vinegar. Good wine needs Led Zeppelin, Steve Miller Band, Deep Purple, John Martyn and the like…
9. Yeast – well, that’s a whole lifetime of learning – and I only hope I have enough time left to even get half a grasp on what my little yeast friends need out of life…
10. Hindsight is a great thing in winemaking. Did I say that already? Definitely worth repeating!

 

Much more to follow....

A Rant about a Rant...

I have been meaning to have a rant about a rant for a few weeks now. But Lidl (and the Irish Times) beat me to it yesterday - Irish Times. So you’ll just have to trust me that I was going to rant about this anyway…

It’s all very well to argue about the origins, ethics and methodology of large producers vs. small producers or the dubious marketing techniques of major retailers – but it can often seem like we (the independent Wine “Industry”) are like the quality, style and trend “Wine police”, telling you what you should and shouldn’t be drinking. Anyone for a glass of “natural” wine while reading this?

Lidl’s decision to offer a “2 bottles for €5” deal yesterday brought everything to a head. It was unfortunate that the Irish Times didn’t get their facts right about Excise Duty (it’s €1.97 a bottle and not €2.72) but even at the lower rate, it’s pretty impossible to source a bottle of wine for around 3 cents, so we can only assume Lidl must have been selling below cost.

It was however hilarious that Conor Pope decided to “review” the wine (“Does it Pass the Taste Test?”) and managed to conclude that it wasn’t actually that nice at the end of the day. WHO CARES? IT’S GOT ALCOHOL IN IT.

And therein lies the problem. The sooner the Wine "Industry" in Ireland wakes up to the fact that it’s not just a middle class drink consumed by people who care if someone has used their bare feet to crush the grapes or not, the better. The simple fact is that it’s a beverage that contains, on average, 12.5% alcohol – and is becoming cheaper by the day.

Wine is the new front-line in the battle to attract a particular demographic of customers who want to buy cheap alcohol. Ever wonder why we don’t see so many promotions for beer or spirits? Mainly because the market is saturated by strong labels who don’t want to devalue their brand too much. But there are literally thousands of hard pressed wine producers out there willing to do a deal to shift thousands of litres of cheap wine – with no brand association other than grape variety and geographical origin. Some of these will appeal to people looking for an inexpensive “Australian Shiraz”, but to many, they are an inexpensive “hit”, delivering a nice “buzz” at a lower price than beer or spirits.

Imagine if we had weekly newspaper columns highlighting “Cigarette of the Week”? Yet we don’t (yet) seem to have that problem with alcohol. Look at Arthur’s Day for example.

But what Lidl (and others no doubt) are doing is pushing Wine as a cheap form of alcohol. And the Wine “Industry” seems oblivious to this. Below cost selling of all alcohol should be banned – not because I’m a whinger and can’t compete with the big boys, but because at the end of the day it’s simply irresponsible to sell something that has the potential to cause massive self-harm in such a way.

And if the Wine “Industry” doesn’t wake up to this reality, then the opportunity to responsibly sell a product that can be wonderful (for many, many reasons regularly highlighted) will be taken away from us by some form of blanket knee-jerk legislation. Quite simply: alcohol should not be sold below cost.

One final thought: if Lidl are happy enough to effectively pay the Excise Duty on behalf of their customers, can you really blame the Government if they increase it in the next Budget? If they see large retailers absorbing it, then maybe the Irish Times’ Excise Duty rate of €2.72 a bottle might not just be a typo, but some form of weirdly accurate prediction.

What Lidl did yesterday was a game-changer – and a very dangerous one for the Independent Wine “Industry” in this country.

It's Hot out there...

It has been hot here in Slovenia - very hot! I know that may sound attractive given that Ireland has apparently just had the coldest summer since 1947. Back at the end of July we had about 10 days of relatively cool temperatures - even as low as 10 Celsius at night. At the time, we felt it was probably a good thing as it would allow the vines to slow down a little - they were about 14 days ahead of previous years at that point.

Now the opposite is happening - daytime highs in the shade are as high as 38 Celsius - and at 2am the other night it was 27 Celsius! A local winemaker told us the daytime temperature in amongst the vines (i.e. in the sun) was 63 Celsius! This is not so good for the vines, or the grapes. What seems to happen is that they begin to shut down - there is plenty of water in the soil, but it's just the searing temperatures that are causing them to batten down the hatches. And there's a big difference between slowing down and shutting down - in the case of shutting down, the sugar levels stop rising, yet acidity continues to drop. Not great for the aim of harvesting phenologically and physiolocically ripe grapes.

Grapes tested this morning on the two rows of vines we have "converted" to single guyot do show increased sugar levels - up to an average of 60 Oechsle. But those on the double-guyot vines have slowed, or even stopped - the vines are struggling to deliver sugar to the higher volumes of fruit - and they are still around the 47 Oechsle level.

Of course, the heat brings other considerations. Two things happened to us for the first time - the first we should have anticipated: we left a bottle of wine in the back of the case, only to return to find the cork and bottle separated! And a smell of wine throughout the whole car - should be interesting next time we face a random police check!

The second incident was less predictable. It would seem the heat shattered, or burst, the rear window on our car. At first we thought it must have been deliberately broken, but the detectives among you will notice that the force that broke it came from the inside - and pushed the glass outwards. All the other windows were open - but this one was closed and we guess that the glass must have expanded slightly - and given it was shut tightly, had no other option but to shatter under pressure. It'll be interesting to see what the insurance company says......

Dear Oh Dell....

It's hot and sweaty here, so maybe I'm just a bit grumpy, but.....

I'm a bit of a luddite with many things technical. The computer games I grew up with were "Pong" and, well.... "Pong". But I pride myself on the fact that I have just about mastered an iPhone (although I'm not sure it was worth mastering) and I'm not too bad at some basic networking. We also run all our phones over VoiP with a great Irish company called Blueface and can therefore make "local" calls from here in Slovenia.

Occasionally I miss some calls, but most people then use voicemail - that's what it's there for! I get a bit suspicious when I can look at the call history and see an "unknown" number calling repeatedly, but not leaving a message. Today I happened to answer a call from one of the many recent "unknowns". Turns out it was from Dell - to tell me that the 1 year warranty on a Dell PC I purchased exactly a year ago is about to expire - today. I was told that the "motherboard" might fail, the graphics card could take a heart attack, the processors could seize up (can they seize?) - anyway, all sorts of ailments were about to hit my PC - but of course I could take out an extended warranty (at a special price of course) to protect myself against this Armageddon of computer bad luck that was heading my way as soon as the crappy 12 month warranty expired.

And that's the problem. I can buy a car with a seven year warranty included - and that has thousands of moving parts and will jolt along the Irish roads year after year. But I can't buy a computer in 2011 without the manufacturer being confident enough to offer a warranty beyond 12 months? So much for advances in technology. The only moving part in a computer (I think) is a fan - what's the big deal about making the rest of the stuff robust enough to last with some form of certainly beyond 12 months....?

And as for the people calling continuously to offer this extended warranty with all the warnings of failure, doom and gloom - what does that do for Brand confidence? I'm certainly not that confident about buying Dell again if they're that worried that I really need an extended warranty.

If I were Mr. or Mrs. Dell (is there still one?), I'd get the people off the phones straight away and get them doing something more useful - like working on how to ensure their computers might just make it past their first birthday.......

More Grapes....!

Although we had a patch of rain at the end of July, and some unseasonally cool weather, the vines continue to race ahead - we estimate they are somewhere between 10-14 days ahead of where they were at this stage last year. Reports from around Europe suggest early harvests everywhere, with some producers scrambling back from holidays and frantically contacting casual labour to prepare for the harvest.

Back in our little corner of the world, things are early, but we still have at least 7-8 weeks to go before the harvest for Sipon and Riesling - and a lot can change in that time. Above are samples of the grapes and the various stages that they are at - Laski Riesling on the left, then Sipon, then Muscat (the most evolved) and then...... an interloper! Some delicious Zweigelt (a clone between Blaufrankisch and St. Laurent) - there are a couple of random vines throughout the vineyard - all we have to do is try and keep the deer away from them!

A quick check back to some pictures from the same time last year shows huch much more evolved the grapes are at this point:

August 2010

In particular, the Riesling is much more advanced, even though the vines are towards the bottom of the hill.

Fingers crossed for the next few weeks - just a little tweaking and then a lot of watching and waiting....

They May Look the Same, But.....

Two sets of grapes – the same variety (Sipon), same soil, same vineyard and picked randomly from the same side of two adjacent rows 1.5 metres apart. They may look the same – but they are very different. Back in February, Sinead pruned two of the rows in the vineyard in the single-Guyot method – the rest of the vineyard has always been double-Guyot.

Based on a quick sample this morning, the results are quite dramatic. The grapes on the right are from the single-Guyot sample and have higher sugar at this stage (47 Oechsle) – but also piercing acidity – making them taste more complex and unevolved – but with more potential (so we think!). The grapes on the left from the double-Guyot pruning have lower sugar (25 Oechsle) yet taste “sweeter” and seem to be “simpler” at this point.

It will be fascinating to see how the two evolve over the coming weeks……..