Transitions—Fall and Winter Wines

Fall arrived in the Black Hills yesterday.  It came in the form of rain, so we are desperately trying not to complain; we know how easily this could be snow—think Atlas, the blizzard that dumped literally feet of snow on us exactly three years ago today. 

The bright yellows, oranges, and reds on the trees make this a spectacular time of year.  Yet this morning was downright chilly, so chilly I could see my breath.  Last night it was already dark at 7:00 p.m., all trade-offs to the beauty that is fall. 

It is time to put away the dreams of summer and open the thoughts of winter.  Time to realize that the warm days will become fewer and farther between.  Time to grasp the fact that snow is on its way…much too soon for some of us.

However, the benefits of cooler temperatures can be seen, especially in the changing seasons of wine.  I have finally come to terms with the fact that winter is coming.  I have even embraced this idea.  Proof?  The wines I have chosen to pull from my cellar this week.  Here’s to fall sipping that soon will turn to winter gulps.  Enjoy these amazing wines to usher in the next season of the year!

King Estate 2008 Blanc de Gris—

            Twenty-six months on the lees before disgorgement, then six years in the bottle, make this the perfect sparkling wine for the cooler weather of fall.  Though this is made in the traditional method with a wonderful acidic backbone, the time in bottle has allowed the Pinot Gris to become fuller and rounder.  Pear and pineapple on the nose and palate add to the gorgeous golden hue.  This bottle matches the season and the delightful fall colors outside.

Two Shepherds 2013 Grenache Blanc—

            William Allen’s Grenache Blanc from the Saarloos Vineyard is an impeccable autumn white.  It is aged on the lees and in neutral oak, making for a creamy texture that pairs perfectly with cooler temperatures.  The acid is just right to add a snap to the flavor, creating an incredibly well-balanced wine with complex flavors from tart-citrus to ripe-golden fruits.  William has a wine for every season, and the 2013 Grenache Blanc is the one for this fall.

J Cage 2014 Pinot Noir—

            From the Nunes Vineyard in Sonoma County, this is a great sipper for the fall.  It is a slightly richer style of pinot, with just-ripened berries showing through on the palate.  There is a great zing in the flavor, adding the exact touch to balance the ripeness.  Forest floor and spice give just the right amount of autumn to this beautifully-colored, deep-garnet wine.  The Beery family has taken their wine-stained dream to another level.  Enjoy this wine this year or wait several years to come.  

Will Work for Wine...Two Shepherds Vineyards

Literally.  Yesterday I worked for wine.  It was my first experience on a bottling line.  Though I was the one “working” (and it was pretty hard work), I felt incredibly lucky to be working on bottling some great wines, Two Shepherds from William Allen.  (I recently shared last summer’s post about his winemaking; read it here.)  Ultimately, this was a great day learning even more about wine!

As many of you have noticed, I am on an extended wine vacation to northern California, enjoying all that both Napa and Sonoma Counties have to offer.  My goal for this time here is to learn something more about wine every day.  Yesterday it was the bottling process.

I have written before about how un-romantic wine making actually is, even though the beverage seems so romantic and mysterious when it is in our glasses.  However, making wine is incredibly hard work.  And when I experience this hard work, it is only for a brief time doing the easiest of jobs in the entire process, so I don’t truly understand the hours of grueling effort it takes to go from bud on the vine to wine in the bottle.  But I have tried.

The entire bottling starts earlier, when the wine maker must put the wines from their barrels or storage vessels into large plastic tanks so they can be attached to the bottling machine via the machine’s hoses.  Then the wine is siphoned through the tubes into the bottling line—a machine that does most of the work, though several human hands must be involved.

At the beginning of the line, someone must empty the glass bottles from their boxes so they can be fed onto the conveyer.  This was retired teacher Bob’s job.  And he was good.  He has helped William on every bottling of Two Shepherds wine.  (Plus he has been in education for forty years, so he is kind of my new hero.) 

Bob feeding the bottles to the conveyer to start the official bottling process.

Next, Matt—owner of the mobile bottling line—stood watch over the machine as it pumped gas, then wine, then gas, then cork into the bottles.  (After this, the foil capsule would be added, but William uses great glass bottles instead of a capsule, creating a very modern overall look.)  Then the Two Shepherds labels are rolled on the bottles as they slide by, and the bottles round a curve on the conveyer belt, pushing them to the end of the line.  This all happens quite quickly. 

Matt overseeing the wine filling the bottles.

 At the end of the line, someone has to catch the bottles, check them, and put them back in the case boxes; this was my job.  Though this job was not hard, it was an arm workout as I repeated the same pick up-twist-inspect-lower motion hundreds…and hundreds…and hundreds of times over the course of five different wines and five different hours.  My final part of the job was to push the case full of wine off the conveyer line. 

Pick up.  Inspect front label.  Twist.  Inspect back label.

Put in the box. 

After my job was complete, new winemaker Mark took the cases of now-full wine bottles, taped them shut, made sure they were properly labeled, and stacked the boxes on a pallet.  Then William moved the pallets of wine to his temporary storage; eventually they will be moved to long-term storage until ready for tasting and sale.

At the beginning of the first bottling, twelve full bottles of wine are dumped, in case any water may have been in the bottling machine’s lines.  When switching between different varietals of wine, the first six bottles of each wine are also dumped to ensure that none of the first wine taints the second.  Proper cleanliness is of the utmost importance throughout the entire process.  All of these steps help to guarantee quality wine. 

The final product.

Now, I am obviously not the expert in this endeavor, as it was my first time, but by the end of the day, I did feel like a bit of an expert on what a properly-adhered label would look like.  Seeing hundreds of them made me great at that job!

Working for wine—and Two Shepherds—was a fun and educational day of my summer vacation.  I can officially say I have harvested grapes twice (read about that here or here) and now bottled wine.  What’s next for my wine education?  Who knows?!  But I truly thank those who have helped me learn so far.  I also truly look forward to what I will study next. 

And the Oscar Goes To...

Here is what I hope is my successful entry for this month's Monthly Wine Writing Challenge--#mwwc15.  (Learn more about the #mwwc here.)I have looked forward to writing this each month I have participated--successful or not--and I look forward to the other successful bloggers' entries.  Keep writing!

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           The glitz and glamor of the Oscars--actresses dolled up in designer gowns, draped in thousands of dollars of jewels, and actors looking dapper in tailored tuxedo suits…the red carpet…the acceptance speeches!  This is the pinnacle of moviemaking, the ultimate sign of success in Hollywood.  Getting to take home one of those little gold men, Oscar, means one has really made it. 

Though there are numerous wine awards across the globe—all the way from state fairs to regional conferences to prominent magazine honors—because wine is so subjective, there is no one “Oscar” for the wine world.  There is no single way a wine would be considered successful.  In fact, the definition of success in the wine world probably varies depending on whether you make wine, market wine, or drink wine.

The Marketer

           The marketing and selling of wine might be the easiest area in which to gauge achievement. Obviously if a wine makes money, there is some level of success.  Two years ago I blogged about the top-selling wines of Wyoming in 2012 (read that blog here).  I would say that most people wouldn’t consider Franzia chilled red a “successful” wine; however, people drink it!  So some level of accomplishment must be given here.  Maybe the accomplishment doesn’t go to the wine itself, but to the technology that allows wine to be kept alive for weeks after opening, or to the marketing of these products to a multitude of consumers, or to the frugality of drinkers when choosing what to enjoy (which is what I finally decided when I was contemplating wine sales of my home state). 

Maybe judging the success of wine through sales is a bit complicated too.

The Consumer

Then let’s judge the success of wine through the wine drinkers, the people spending this money on wine.  One wineaux (AKA, wine lover) said that a wine is successful when a producer has met the quality to have people enjoy it.  True...but we just learned that people may enjoy a wine based more on price level than actual quality.  Another wineaux said, “When multiple bottles sit on a table surrounded by happy friends and family savoring and enjoying each sip.”  This is a more correct statement.  Here the wine is not being judged on price, but on experience.  The experience of enjoying wine is one of the most important aspects of wine, and yet, it is another intangible, another level that can not really be measured. 



Some of my favorite wineauxs enjoying the experience of wine!

Sommeliers and wine critics would be more objective about wine quality, but even these experts have subjective points of view. 

The Critic

I learned very early in my wine career that there were generally two sides of taste:  the Robert Parker Camp and the Jancis Robinson Camp.  (This camp seems to be expanding; it could also be called the Alice Feiring camp, or the Jon Bonne camp, or the Eric Asimov camp.) Parker has become known for loving big, fruit forward, heavily oaked, generally more robust wines with high levels of alcohol.  Are there many quality wines with these attributes?  Of course!  However, do all wines with these characteristics exhibit excellence?  No. 

The Robinson et al. camp supports more natural wines:  wines with less inference after harvest, more organic or biodynamic grapes, higher acid levels, and lower alcohol in the end product.   Of course, both of these are over-generalized statements about these wine authorities, really doing neither camp justice. 

The point is that even those who spend years researching and honing their crafts and levels of wine knowledge have specific tastes in wine, making the idea of success still unclear.

Alice Feiring et al. books on wine.

The Wine Maker   

Another group of experts in the field of wine would definitely be the wine makers.  They are uncompromising judges of what makes a wine successful.  True, they also want to sell wine, but (I am going to claim) the majority of producers genuinely care about the products they make.  According to two very dedicated winemakers, success starts in the vineyard, no matter where grapes are grown.  William Allen of Two Shepherds (of Sonoma County, California) and Patrick Zimmerer (of Huntley, Wyoming) use grapes grown in very different environments, but both state that wine starts with the grapes, and this is the ultimate deciding factor on the outcome of the final product.

Allen, who primarily works with Rhone varieties, knows that if grapes are grown to show the purest expression of the variety and vintage year, his job is then to do as little manipulation as possible to the fruit when turning it into wine.  The real work happens in the vineyard, deciding when to pull leaves, change the canopy, thin the fruit, and irrigate the vines.  All of this is before determining the precise ripeness through flavor, sugar, and acid levels after Mother Nature has, inevitably, made the decision to pick a bit of a gamble.  (Read more about Two Shepherds wines here).

Two Shepherds wines--success starts in the vineyard.

 Though Zimmerer grows hybrid grapes in an environment that could be considered almost completely opposite of Sonoma County, he echoes the thoughts of Allen.  He agrees successful wines happen in the vineyard, but his gamble with Mother Nature is even more intense.  Wyoming grapes always take a chance of whether they make it to ideal ripeness due to so many more natural weather obstacles.  Hail storms, mid-May freezes, September snows, an early or late frost, and a short growing season all hinder ideal picking conditions.  However, sun, water, and soil enable Zimmerer to be the steward to help the grapes along the way, finally ushering the fruit through fermentation to the bottle.

Table Mountain Vineyards--Wyoming vines and wines.

The Ultimate Test

            Even winemakers agree that to truly produce a successful wine, it is enjoyed with friends, a meal, or a special occasion.  The wine should reflect the year the grapes were grown, the weather, and the work it took to make the end product.  Sometimes even this level of success takes the same patience as waiting for the fruit to grow and the wine to ferment. Often a difficult vintage year where Mother Nature was uncooperative and yields were low can turn into quite a victory in the bottle if just given some time.  Allen says this is accurate of his 2011 wines, wines that will eventually delight consumers as one of his best years yet.  Zimmerer also states that each harvest, especially in Wyoming, is very extraordinary, but with special care and attention every step of the way, the final product can be celebrated as a success!

            Winemakers are probably the last people to want to dress up and walk a red carpet in the fanciest of clothes…and maybe this is a good thing since truly successful wines are so subjective and difficult to choose.  A successful wine isn’t necessarily one that gets the highest rating, or makes the most money, or gets the most accolades.  A successful wine is one that shows where it is from, not only the region, but the time and the weather.  It is a wine that was loved from vine, to bud break, to leaf, to fruit, to harvest.  It is a wine that is cared for deeply after picking, even if that care is shown by the least amount of intervention possible.  A successful wine may have to sit in the bottle while the winemaker patiently waits for it to be ready to show its true sense of time and place.  Then, this wine is enjoyed by consumers—genuinely and deeply enjoyed—maybe with special people, maybe at a special location, maybe for a special event.  Whatever the case, it evokes memories as well as creates them.  The Oscar would be awarded with a “Cheers,” a sip, and a smile. 

It's the Thought That Counts--Two Shepherds Vineyards

It takes a lot to make wine.  Yes, one needs grapes, and equipment, and time, and money, and passion, and work ethic, and…the list goes on and on.  However, to make GOOD wine—really GOOD wine—it also takes a lot of thought. 

Voltaire once said, “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”  William Allen of Two Shepherds Wines saw a problem.  He saw wines that were over-processed and over-worked, wines that didn’t show a sense of place where the grapes were grown.  He saw too much manipulation, too much use of the same grape varieties.  And William thought. 

He moved to California wine country and thought.  He started his own wine blog as “Sonoma William”—Simple Hedonisms—and continued thinking.  He home brewed beer.  He started making small batches of wine.  He became part of the Rhone Rangers movement and then president of the North Coast Rhone Rangers, focusing on grapes that are traditionally grown in the Rhone Valley of France:  Grenache, Grenache Blanc, Viognier, Syrah, and Mourvedre.  He thought, and thought, and thought.  He began to form the ideas of what he believed would not only make wine in northern California, but make great wine. 

This “assault of sustained thinking” led him to use primarily neutral oak, all indigenous yeasts (with no inoculation), and some whole cluster fermentation with no new oak, no filtering, and no Cabernet Sauvignon. He started small—just 175 cases in 2010; however, by 2013 he was up to 1,000 cases from 11 varieties (10 of which are Rhone) sourced all the way from the more southern area of the Santa Ynez Valley to the more central area of Lodi.  This is quite an undertaking, especially considering that, for the most part, William is a one-man show, doing the majority of the production work himself, all while still maintaining his full-time “day job”.

William pondered everything:  what grape varieties to use, where the grapes were grown, how the grapes were grown, and how they were harvested.  He considered bottle shape and size, cork type and artwork, and label design and colors.  Every detail was painstakingly thought through…with amazing results!

The Whites

Grenache Blanc 2012—Two Shepherds largest production with 200 cases made, this wine (sourced from the Saarloos Vineyard in Santa Ynez) is filled with mineral on the nose and golden apples on the palate while being both incredibly smooth and brightly acidic.  (I purchased this white.)

Pastoral Blanc 2012:  Roussanne, Marsanne, Viognier, Grenache Blanc Blend—The nose shines with pineapple and baked apple as the palate reinforces these fruits.  Once again, this wine has that great acidity while maintaining a velvety smoothness not often found in acidic whites.  William thinks this wine has great aging potential for the next decade.

Pastoral Blanc 2012, Trousseau Gris 2012, and Mourvedre 2012

Viognier 2013—Grown in Saralee’s Vineyard in the Russian River Valley (one of William’s absolute favorites), the nose of this wine is filled with flowers and tropical fruits which are repeated on the palate.  With only thirty-three cases made, this is a very special wine.

 

Grenache 2012, Grenache Blanc 2012, Pastoral Blanc 2012

Trousseau Gris 2012—This might be considered a schizophrenic wine showing William’s inner wine geek and constantly-processing brain.  William used white grapes but produced them as he would a red wine, with 12 days on the skins after two punch downs a day; it is a beautiful neon-apricot color showing soft tropical fruits on the nose and palate.  William recommends continuing to treat this as a red wine and serving it at red wine temperature.

The Reds

Grenache Noir 2012—Also sourced from Saralee’s Vineyard in RRV, this was my favorite red!  A slightly murky shade of chokecherry, the nose was filled with strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries; the palate was packed with these mixed berries and that zippy acid that William’s wines display.  (I purchased two of these and have already consumed one.)  A barrel tasting of the 2013 Grenache had slightly less fruit on the nose at this time but still great berries and acid on the palate.  This 2013 is shaping up to be just as fantastic as the 2012.

Grenache 2012

Syrah/Mourvedre 2011—This almost fifty-fifty blend sourced from the Russian River Valley has baked fruit and spice on the nose with currant, cherry, spice, and metal on the palate; I might add this also had a finish that lasted forever!  The aging possibilities on this wine look good.

Mourvedre 2012—Also sourced from the RRV, the nose had currants and cherries with dried herbs that were repeated on the palate with lively acid.  Such a great style of Mourvedre, with only 12.3% alcohol (lower alcohol percentages are typical of William’s wines).  This would be a great food-pairing wine.  (I also purchased this wine.)

Viognier 2013 and Syrah/Mourvedre 2011

William Allen definitely made all of his thinking count when he started his Two Shepherds label.  Though he lives in the part of the country where he has easier access to the basics of winemaking—grapes, equipment, facilities, storage, etc.—and he added the time and money needed to make wine, he knew he wanted more.  He wanted to make a THOUGHTFUL wine, a wine that fixed the problems he saw in the industry.  His attentive yet almost minimalist style of winemaking is a model to be emulated, to be followed, to be enjoyed.  William definitely made his sustained thinking about absolutely every detail of winemaking count!

Two purchase any of these wines, please go to the website:  Two Shepherds Vineyards.