In the Winery

Gewürztraminer: 2009 was a success, what’s happening with 2010?

by Serena on February 8, 2011

“No thanks, I don’t like sweet wines.”

We hear that often when we are pouring our Gewurztraminer, because lots of people have tasted very sweet, cloying Gewurtztraminer.  That is not the type of Gewurztraminer that we enjoy nor is it how Alan makes the Cartograph Gewurztraminer. So, when we see people shying away from tasting our Gewurztraminer, that’s when we know we have a great opportunity to show them something different.

The 2009 Cartograph Gewurtz is, in fact, a “dry” wine.  (geeky side note: A dry wine is a wine that has up to 4 grams per liter of residual sugar (EU regulation 753/2002) and our 2009 Gewurztraminer is well under 1g/liter – literally no perceived sweetness) It has a wonderful floral, perfumed aroma reminiscent of apricot, white peach, and honeysuckle blossom, with underlying mineral and slate aromas.

If you stop there, the wine has fooled you. It is not a perfumey, sweet, honey suckle wine.   On the palate the acidity steps forward in a very crisp manner and balances the flavors of honeydew melon, peach, and sweet citrus. It pairs beautifully with spicy foods because it cuts through the spice and heat bringing a refreshing zest to a meal. My favorite pairing is the Gewurztraminer with Vietnamese or Indian food.  A lovely surprise I discovered while in class at the SF Cheese School was that Munster pairs beautifully with Gewurz!

Several restaurants have put our Gewurztraminer on their wine lists and we’re hearing about all sorts of great pairings from foie gras to spicy meatballs. We also received a great review in the February 2011 Wine Enthusiast (91 points and editor’s choice!) and a really nice write up in Artful Living Magazine. It’s always nice to get a little love back for something into which you’ve put so much of your heart.

So what is happening with the 2010 vintage?

The growing season for 2010 was a funky one as described by Alan previously in his post “2010- what a year in the vineyard.” We had a great time picking the 2010 Gewurtztraminer grapes as we had the pleasure of several friends participating in the process which makes those middle of the night picks a lot of fun. When picking Gewurtz, perhaps the very best thing is when you pop one of those beautiful grapes covered with dew in your mouth and it explodes with all the flavors you later see echoed in the wine. Delicious!

Ice on The Gewurz holding tank

Ice forms on the side of the holding tank pre-bottling

The 2010 vintage had a nice long, slow ferment which preserves those wonderful aromas that Gewurz has and the wine has been quietly aging in steel drums. No oak is used in producing our dry Gewurztraminer. We’ve just transferred the wine to tank (see picture at left) to chill it down to about 26 degrees. This will prompt any tartrate crystals to precipitate out so that we leave them behind before bottling. This keeps the crystals from forming in your bottle as you chill the wine for drinking. We’re excited to get this wine out to you because it is a dead ringer for the awesome 2009 version. We anticipate releasing the 2010 Gewurztraminer in early spring 2011. Stay tuned…

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2010, What a Year in the Vineyard!

by Alan on November 12, 2010

Perli Vineyard, Mendocino Ridge AVA

Perli Vineyard, September 2010

Now that all the 2010 Cartograph wines are safely tucked away in barrel for the winter, we can take a moment to reflect on a season that held many surprises.

We had abundant rainfall in the winter of 2009/2010 and a cold spring which gave us quite a late start. And considering the cool foggy conditions that persisted into the summer months, it almost felt like summer wasn’t going to happen at all. To combat the cool wet conditions many growers had to pull most of the leaves from the fruit zone to keep the fruit free of mildew. This set up a perfect storm for some vines as the first real heat came very fast and the temperature went from 51 to 109 degrees in a single day and some fruit was quickly burned to raisins. There were a few more 100+ degree days to contend with after that, so the task of getting quality fruit meant that we had to drop a depressingly large amount of fruit that had sunburn. In our Pinot and Gewürz vines it hurt all the more because half the cluster was raisined and the other half was pristine beautiful berries. But, we knew we couldn’t pull them all apart on the sorting table so to the ground they went.

As a winemaker I was really excited by the cool summer because the cool conditions had the grapes maturing very slowly. This meant the grapes had ripe flavors at low sugar levels. We picked most of our Pinot around 22.5 Brix. In a typical year grapes at this sugar level would still have green seeds and very high acids. It was a wild ride as we dodged heat spikes and threat of rain to get the fruit in but the many passes in the vineyard paid off with beautiful grapes going into the tank. All the Pinot noir came through fermentation with alcohol levels under 14%. For every winemaker who ever said they wished they could get fruit in with good flavor at reasonable sugar levels, this was the year it was possible. We’re ecstatic.

It seems pretty nerdy to be excited about a stainless steel fermentation tank but this year we added a temperature-controlled tank specifically to ferment our small 1.5 ton lot of Gewürztraminer. It was a cold, slow, fermentation that really has the aromas popping out of the glass right now. These aromas will moderate before bottling to better match the dry mineral-driven complexity of the wine. We’re really excited by the Gewürz again this year.

We’re going into winter very grateful to have such great growers to work with who provided awesome fruit in a year that took creativity and a LOT of work to deliver such killer grapes.

Here’s to a nice mellow winter.

Cheers, Alan

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Vinwood processes more grapes in a day than we’d pick in 115 years!

by Alan on October 21, 2010

OK, the headline is a bit inflammatory but after visiting a Cabernet pick for Leslie Sisneros’ Ispiri wines on Pine Mountain yesterday, we drove by the Kendall Jackson Vinwood facility near Geyserville and saw the long line of trucks with loaded valley bins waiting to check through the sugar shack and unload on the crushpad. We swung through the parking lot to get a look at things, and heard that they would be processing 1,100 tons of fruit in a single day.

That’s a lot of fruit. Eleven hundred tons…

At our current production level it would take us over 100 years to process that many grapes. Granted our production level will go up but that number – 1,100 – just blew me away.

Here’s a short video of the line of trucks waiting to get to the crushpad.

Each of those bins holds about five tons of fruit. So those double trailers can bring in 100 tons or more.
The coming rain has everybody picking as fast as they can but facilities are hitting their limit of how much fruit they can process in a single day. And, tank space for fermentation is a precious commodity right now.

I’m feeling very lucky that all of the 2010 Cartograph wines are in barrel. It’s a wild ride out in the valleys right now. Hang in there folks, we’re almost to the finish line.

Alan

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Pressing and Barreling Down the Pinot Noir

by Serena on October 13, 2010

The last of the 2010 Pinot Noir is going into barrel today!

The grapes were picked the last couple weeks of September and had about a five day cold soak followed by 8-10 days of fermentation.  When the fermentation was over (meaning the Pinot was dry which means no residual sugars as evidenced by a Brix reading of -1.5-ish), the Pinot was allowed to “free run” into a tank.  After the free run was captured, the must was moved to the press where it was gently pressed over a two hour period to get the remaining wine from the must.

With each press cycle there is an increase in pressure which means that as you taste the wine from each cycle, it tends to become sharper and more tannic but you also get a tiny bit of sugar from the berries and mid press run the wine is very soft and supple as a result. It was interesting to notice this year in all Pinot noir lots that the pressed wine was not picking up any green or sharp characters. Our guess is that the very long growing season let us reach optimal maturity so the tannins coming from the seeds were mature and not sharp. During the Pinot pressing, the flavors varied from  soft strawberry to earthy and varied in color from a milky light purple/pink to a dark clear dark purple/red color. Depending on lot size and vineyard we go directly from the press to barrel, or sometimes let the wine settle for 24 hours, and then move to French oak barrels.

The process of going from the tank or press to barrel is called “barreling down.”  We used a combination of new, one year old, and neutral French oak barrels for the Pinot.  It’s really interesting in spring to compare the tastes between the different barrels and see how the wine is influenced by the quantity of oak that each barrel gives off.  Alan chooses this mixed regimen of barrels to get the greatest variety and depth of flavor so that when he blends the barrels together before bottling the wine has greater complexity.

It is immensely satisfying to  get the wines into barrel in such great shape. And this season, more than any we have seen,  was a challenge for growers. We owe a huge debt to Warren Burton at Floodgate and Steve Alden at Perli Vineyard for the many sleepless nights and hard work it took to deliver such wonderful grapes.

Cheers, to them.

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Punching Down the Grape Must

by Serena on October 7, 2010

With our Pinot noir we do one punch down per day while it is cold soaking and then increase it to three times a day while it is fermenting vigorously, and then we back off as the fermentation slowly finishes.

A punchdown involves a tool that looks like an oversize potato masher and gently pushing down the cap (the grape skins, stems, and seeds that form on top of the juice due to CO2 rising from them) into the juice blelow.  This allows the juice from underneath to rehydrate the cap.

This is done for several reasons:

  • to bring the juice back into contact with the skins which helps with color and flavor extraction
  • to introduce some oxygen to the yeast which helps fermentation
  • to prevent harmful bacterial growth by mixing up the must and the juice
  • punchdowns can lower the must temperature to keep things from getting too warm which might cook off the delicate aromas of the Pinot noir grape

As you push the cap into the juice you see gorgeous purple foam rise up from the fermenting juice. this video doesn’t quite do it justice but you can see the activity in this fermenting Pinot.

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Racking and Inoculation of the Gewürz…

by Serena on September 23, 2010

Sounds a little ominous but the Gewürztraminer really did enjoy it.  And how do I know it did?  – by all the bubbling activity in the yeast!

The Gewürztraminer grapes were picked early in the morning on Friday Sept. 16 and brought straight from Floodgate Vineyard to the winery where they were pressed over the course of 2.5 hours then left in a tank to settle for 24 hours.  After being in tank we need to separate the juice from the lees.  The lees are the particulate matter that precipitates out of the juice and settle to the bottom of a tank or barrel.

In order to “rack” the juice from the lees, we needed a forklift, another tank, some large tubing, and our friend Amato.  There is all sorts of equipment to clean and sterilize in order to get the juice from the tank it settled in to the fermentation tank (a stainless steel temperature controlled tank).  So the first hour of this process was cleaning tanks, tubes, lids, thermometers, etc.  Luckily, we all have big old rubber boots keeping our feet and legs dry.  Once everything was clean, we connected the settling tank to the fermentation tank with a hose and opened the valves and let the juice flow.  In order to make sure we were not bringing the lees from the settling tank into the fermentation tank, there is a looking glass on the fixture attached to the settling tank so if you hold a flashlight up to it, you can see the clarity of the juice.  Thus, when you start to see some lees flowing, you close the valve and you’re done. The lees are fermented separately and that wine may be included in the final wine if it has flavor or aroma that we desire in the finished wine.

1000 Liter tank

1000 Liter tank with cooling jacket to maintain temp

The Gewürztraminer rested for another 24 hours in the fermentation tank before inoculation with yeast.  Yeast smells delicious when it is mixed with warm water, think lemon bread baking in the oven.  When the yeast were bubbling up happy with the warmth, we then needed to very gently cool them down without shocking them and causing them to stop multiplying.  The reason we needed to cool them down was that the juice in the tank was at 44degrees F so had we just poured the warm bubbly yeast in, they may have been so startled by the cold that they would shut down and not kick off the fermentation. So over about an hour and a half we slowly added juice from the tank to the yeast container and waited for it to acclimate before adding more juice.  It’s a little bit like watching paint dry except that the yeast becomes thicker and foamier as they consume the sugar in the juice.

Eventually, the temp got where it need to be (within 10 degrees of the juice) and all the yeast got added to the fermentation tank where they are now slowly ticking away fermenting the Gewürztraminer juice.  This will be a nice, slow ferment over the next 2 – 3 weeks.  If it ferments too quickly (which happens if the juice gets too warm) then it runs the risk of burning off some of the aromatics that are so beautiful in Gewürztraminer. The target temp for this ferment is right around 50 deg F.

Here is what the juice looks like four days into the ferment. It has wonderful apricot and black tea aromas right now and a fizzy peach nectar flavor. It will stay this slightly cloudy color until late in the fermentation when the yeast die off and settle to the bottom of the tank. If you’re in the area now (sept 2010) and want to taste the awesome flavors of fermenting Gewürz. Let us know.

Cheers, Serena

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2009 Vintage Put to Bed – Pinot is in the Bottle

August 20, 2010

We wrapped up the ’09 Cartograph vintage by bottling the ’09 Pinot Noir on Thursday 8/19. It is amazing to look back on everything that has happened over the past year and to be at this point.  One year ago we were scrambling to get all of our licensing in place to crush under the [...]

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Bottling the First Cartograph Wines

February 14, 2010

February 14, 2010 Bottling is a loud, joyous, flurry of activity. It reflects the culmination of months or even years of work you’ve done on one particular wine. All the decisions about when to pick, how to ferment the grapes, what the aging regimen will be, and so on are all over on this day. [...]

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