This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
Are you looking for something fun to do this Sunday? How about tasting some Virginia Wine? Let’s meet at Arrowine!
Join us at Arrowine (4508 Cherry Hill Road) this Sunday, July 23 from 1-4 p.m. for our Two Table Super Tasting! Featuring some of Virginia’s Best with Glen Manor, Early Mountain, Midland, Vino del Bosco, and Veritas Wineries all in one place — without driving to the wineries. They will all be here for you to sample at Arrowine!
By Reservation only. Attendance is limited to ensure a great experience. All attendees must be 21 and possess a valid picture ID.
Additional details:
Cost: There is no charge for this tasting event!
Discounts: Tasting discounts are “on”! Every wine you taste will be on sale during the event, at least 10% off the regular price. We’ll have wine available for purchase, and if you want more than we have available, discounts will apply to tasting wines you order during the event, too!
This event will be popular. To attend, please fill out this form, or e-mail us at [email protected] and let us know you plan to attend. Include the following information in your email:
- Name
- E-mail and phone contact information
- Number of people in your group
- When you expect to arrive: (a) 1–2 p.m., (b) 2–3 p.m., or (c) 3–4 p.m.
We will confirm all reservations by e-mail. If attending, we will add you to our e-mail list that announces special events and sales.
We look forward to seeing you!
Doug Rosen
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
Looking for something fun to do this Sunday, June 11?
Join us at Arrowine (4508 Cherry Hill Road) this Sunday from 1-4 p.m. for an Italian Wine Super Tasting! We will proudly feature 15 top wines and values from Arlington-based Michael R. Downey Portfolio.
Downey Selections have been importing and distributing wine regionally since 1998, and it all started here in Arlington — with founders Michael and Peg Downey and their children Brennan and Shannon. All of the wines will be on sale during the event. We’ll have wine available for purchase. The wines being poured are classic examples from Italy’s most prestigious wine regions.
This event is by reservation ONLY. Attendance is limited to ensure a great experience. All attendees must be 21 and possess a valid picture ID. We will be checking. This event will be popular. Please email us at wine @ arrowine.com and let us know if you plan to attend.
Please include the following information:
- Name
- Email or phone contact information
- Number of people in your group
- When you expect to arrive: (a) 1–2 p.m., (b) 2–3 p.m., or (c) 3–4 p.m.
We will confirm all reservations by email.
We look forward to seeing you!
Doug Rosen
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
Are you looking for something fun to do on Sunday? Isn’t it time we met?
Join us at Arrowine (4508 Cherry Hill Road in Arlington) this Sunday, May 7 from 1–4 p.m. so you don’t miss a Special Three Table Super Tasting with wines from the Lux Wines portfolio!
At this Arrowine Sunday Super Tasting event, you’ll be able to taste prestigious Italian and American wines, including Barolo, Brunello, and even Amarone della Valpolicella, hand-picked from the portfolio of the Gallo Family’s Lux Wines group.
The tasting list for this special event includes Jermann from Friuli, Pieropan from Veneto, Tornatore from Sicily, Argiano from Tuscany (including their famous Brunello di Montalcino and Solengo Super Tuscan), Renato Ratti from Piedmont (including their famous Barolo “Marcenasco”), Jayson by Pahlmayer from California, Allegini from Valpolicella (including their famous Amarone), Brancaia from Tuscany (including the highly-rated “Itatraia” Super Tuscan), and more.
There is no charge for this tasting event and tasting discounts are “on”! Every wine you taste will be ON SALE during the event, at least 10% off the regular price. We’ll have wine available for purchase, and if you want more than we have available, discounts will apply to tasting wines you order during the event, too!
This event is by reservation ONLY. Attendance is limited to ensure a great experience. All attendees must be 21 and possess a valid picture ID.
This event will be popular. Please e-mail us at [email protected] and let us know you plan to attend. Please include the following information:
- Name
- Email and phone contact information
- Number of people in your group
- When you expect to arrive:
- (a) 1-2 p.m., (b) 2-3 p.m., or (c) 3-4 p.m.
We will confirm all reservations by e-mail. If attending, we will add you to our e-mail list that announces special events and sales.
We look forward to seeing you!
Doug Rosen
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
Are you looking for something fun to do on a rainy Sunday? Isn’t it time we met?
Join us at Arrowine (4508 Cherry Hill Road in Arlington) this Sunday, April 30 from 1-4 p.m. for a Very Special French Wine Supertasting featuring the selections of Edward Addiss and Barbara Selig of Wine Traditions of Falls Church.
Ed and Barbara have been importing French Wines for thirty years, and have a keen eye and “nose” and represent some of the best values in French Wine.
This Sunday, at no cost, you can taste classic examples from France’s renowned wine regions like the Loire Valley, Rhône Valley, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and more! And they’re all on sale during the event. Tasting discounts are “on”!
We’ll have wine available for purchase, and if you want more than we have available, discounts will apply to tasting wines you order (at least 10% off the regular price) during the event, too! These are exciting wines representing textbook examples of classic styles from prestigious regions. They’ll even be on sale during the tasting, so you can stock up and save!
This event is by reservation ONLY. Attendance is limited to ensure a great experience. All attendees must be 21 and possess a valid picture ID. We will be checking.
This event will be popular. We ask that you email us at [email protected] and let us know you plan to attend. Please include the following information:
- Name
- Email or phone contact information
- Number of people in your group
- When you expect to arrive:
- (a) 1-2 p.m., (b) 2-3 p.m. or (c) 3-4 p.m.
We will confirm all reservations by email.
We look forward to seeing you!
Doug Rosen
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
Can we talk?
This column is an advertisement and an instrument to generate interest and, hopefully, revenue. But it’s more than that to me. For those of you who know me, my work, and Arrowine, you know I hate bu**sh**.
I’m no spring chicken, and the reality of turning sixty-five this June boggles my mind and scares me in many ways. So I ask myself that age-old question, where did the years go? My father used to say, “one day, you are going to wake up, look in the mirror, and not recognize who you’re looking at!” And that day has come and in spades.
That leads me to my next rant, retirement. And do what? Play golf? Move to the beach, or heaven forbid Florida? I sooner walk in front of a bus. I can’t afford to retire, anyway. Part of it is my fault. And let’s not forget the last three years have been unmitigated hell. Doing the right thing can be expensive. It can drain your bank account but not your conscience.
Thankfully, COVID-19 is waning, but it sure is alive and well with me. And it’s just the beginning. We are witnessing the largest shifting and realignment of the post-Great Depression economy. Just look around you. How many businesses failed? How many people lost their jobs and everything at no fault of their own? It was an economic Tsunami. And let’s not mention over one million Americans died before their time. So what did we as a nation and society learn from this? Not much, and it scares the hell out of me.
In my naivety, I thought it might bring our fractured nation closer. Our differences would pale in comparison to saving lives and respecting our neighbor’s health and well-being. But it did exactly the opposite!
A pandemic is inconvenient, expensive, and a first-rate pain in the ass. We didn’t ask for this! But science is science, one plus one equals two, and yes, we did land on the moon. So in a crisis, in a war, you do what you must do, not what is expedient or easy.
You do what is right, what is moral, and honorable because anything less is undignified and selfish. I will have to work a bit longer or maybe until I drop, but that’s how it is.
Arrowine isn’t my work. It gives me purpose and pleasure. It is who I am, and I love it! There are days, weeks, months, and years of aggravation, challenges, frustrations, and uncertainty, but it’s who I am. G-d and my loved ones give me strength, but you motivate me. So, thank you for that.
In return, I promise to give you my very best, I sincerely thank you for sticking by us through thick and thin, and I sincerely appreciate it.
That leads me to what matters, the future. We have looked long and hard at what we were doing and how we did it. With the help of our entire staff, we are retooling, refining, and re-creating Arrowine. So we are getting rid of what didn’t work to add value to your shopping experience and to ensure that we are a part of this community for many years to come. Our best is yet to come!
Thank you for reading this,
Doug Rosen, Shem Hassan, Ayet Boudjellal, and the entire Arrowine team
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
Hello my friends,
Please excuse my absence during the holiday season. I’m back, well sort of, I’m in Paris concluding my annual “French Death March.” Well, it was annually up until three years ago. Now I can hear you all saying, “Oh that’s rough! Can I carry your bags?” It is usually the comment that follows.
I flew via Amsterdam to Montpellier, France. The Schipol airport is enormous. Luckily I had an eight-hour layover, so there was no need to rush. But, despite the enormity of the place, you can’t find a cup of coffee at 6 a.m. anywhere. So I had to settle for a Heineken, and I thought the Dutch were “coffee people.” So after cooling my heels for eight hours desperately trying not to fall asleep, at the shop-worn bar, in my “get the hell out of my Country Termial,” I was raring to go, albeit exhausted. No glamour here, folks.
Montpellier has been the home to Millésime Bio since 1991, and you guessed it is all about organic wine. It is the place to meet, taste and visit with winemakers who work organically, as most of mine do.
It was great to see old friends and have the opportunity to ferret out some “new and interesting” players. The fair is only two days long, and there are also several “off” tastings (located in different venues) before and during the fair. Folks who can’t afford or choose not to participate in the fair seize the opportunity to steal attention while everyone is in town. I stick to my agenda to save precious time.
That was a wise move, and I found some fabulous new winemakers. On the first day, I potentially bagged five. But it’s more challenging than it sounds. You must taste a lot of uninspired, sometimes technically flawed crap to find a winner. But I am always on point and excel at sizing up a winner with just a glance.
I headed to Paris to embark on Phase 2 in Angers, the Salon des Vins de Loire. So why go back to Paris? Driving the 7-plus hours is the only “direct” way to Angers from Montpellier, and the trains take just as long, especially when you are schlepping 2 1/2 weeks’ worth of luggage.
The Loire Salon is my sentimental favorite. The Salon has shrunk over the years. What was once three large halls is now one. And that includes the Bio-Dynamic growers certified by the Federation Demeter International. Biodynamics viticulture goes back to ancient earth healing techniques, with all the processes performed in conjunction with the lunar calendar. So let’s say organic “on steroids.” That was the best I could come up with, but you get the idea.
Like Millésime Bio, there are also “off” tastings. The Salon St. Jean at the Greniers St. Jean is an excellent tasting, started over twenty years ago by winemaker Nicolas Joly, who wrote “the book” on Biodynamics. Based on the works of Rudolph Steiner in 1924, Joly is responsible for bringing Biodynamic practices to the forefront of viticulture, changing the course of winemaking and wine worldwide.
And there is the infamous Dive Boutteille Natural Wine held in Saumur at the Caves Ackermann, and I mean caves. I pass on that one. The caves are cold, dank, and dark. It is impossible to taste well under those conditions. There are good wines with many fine growers, but no thanks.
Wine Paris and Vinexpo start on Monday and run till Wednesday. So I’m here in Paris getting myself ready. Bring it on!
Cheers,
Doug Rosen
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
I’m going to make it easy for you. The typical Thanksgiving dinner is a culinary hodgepodge and a sommelier’s biggest challenge. So the goal here is to wash it all down deliciously.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Thanksgiving dinner! My Mom, the Goddess of Thanksgiving, rocked it better than anyone. Her green bean casserole, believe it or not, was delicious. Mom’s stuffing was a delightful moist conglomeration of steer liver, onions, butter, toasted bread, and Bell’s Seasoning. I can still taste it. Her twice-baked stuffed potatoes were to die for, with their crusty paprika-laced exteriors that encased a garlicky, velvety, creamy lusciousness. And then there was her home-orangy-tangy cranberry sauce, OMG!
Here’s the key to selecting your perfect Thanksgiving wine. Any “sweetness” on the Thanksgiving table will clash with a “bone-dry” wine. Cranberry sauce is “sneaky.” It changes the entire dynamic of the meal. Every year for the last 44, I have risked life, limb, and liver to find the Holy Grails of Thanksgiving Wine.
Check out shoparrowine.com, place an order and let us do the rest. We will even bring it to your car! We have designated free parking just behind Arrowine. What could be easier?
This list is foolproof. If you can’t make it to Arrowine, use my suggestions as a reference.
And the envelope please…
- Le Berceau Blanquette de Limoux NV, France: $14.99
Every celebration should start with a fizz. And at $14.99, this dry and complex Methode Champanoise hits the nail on the head.
- 2021 Domaine du Pas Saint Martin, Le Vent Dans Les Saules, Anjou France: $19.99
This 100% Dry Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley is brimming with opulent flavors of sliced apples, spiced pears, tangerines, and a vibrant palate-cleansing mineral finish.
- 2021 Domaine Billard Bourgogne Aligote, France: $19.99
The “Other White Burgundy” on the nose is kumquat and nectarine, with just a hint of lemon zest. The palate adds lime and Japanese yellow plum with a refreshing cleansing and mineral finish.
- 2020 Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis, Sainte Claire: $31.99
This wine has soul; it’s richly flavored, mineral, and complex. The palate has laser-like flavors of wet stone, crushed seashells, and fresh sweet butter. The finish is long and lingering.
- 2021 Margerum M5, Los Olivos, California: $25.99
This White California Rhône Blend is a “no-brainer” for Thanksgiving. A skillful and brilliant blend of Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier, and Picpoul Blanc with aromas of apricots, white florals, and flavors of apple and peach nectar with a zippy finish. Poetic.
- 2021 Valle de Inez Pinot Nor San Luis Obispo, California: $21.99
Doug Margerum crafted this complex, bargain Pinot. It has structure and complexity and is drier than most — a “serious” Pinot from California at a price.
- 2021 Ken Wright Cellars, Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, Oregon: $29.99
This wine is a textbook Willamette Pinot. It checks all the boxes and more. Lots of cherry fruit, smooth and sensual. A delight to drink, delicious.
- 2021 Domaine Laurent and Romain Pillot Bougogne, France: $24.99
My go-to Bourgogne for over 15 years, no one does it better, and a price that is impossible to beat for the “Real McCoy.” Supple, medium-bodied, and loaded with crystalline strawberry/mineral fruit. A winner.
- 2021 Melville Pinot Noir, Santa Rita Hills, California: $44.99
Complex and satisfying, Melville delivers. Lots of cherry/strawberry fruit and well-integrated oak make this supple Pinot a stand-out.
- 2020 Lafond Lirac “Roc Épine” Rhône Valley, France: $22.99
If you like a gutsy Côtes du Rhône, this Lirac is richer and more complex. This wine is spicy, smooth, and a joy to drink!
Happy Thanksgiving from the Arrowine Family to yours,
Doug Rosen
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
Welcome to the final installment of the “so you want to make wine series” or “what was I thinkin?” So today, we will finish with the maturation process of red wine. And, of course, a delicious suggestion for your table.
Any winemaker worth his salt vinifies every parcel and varietal separately. That allows you to dial in and elevate the quality of every Cuvee you make.
Some parcels are better than others or different. The easiest way to create several wines at several price points is to declassify some. The “Grand Vin,” or first wine, is the best of the best. Take Chateau Latour. Only the very best barrels go into “Chateau Latour.” The second wine, “Les Forts de Latour” is the next best and, finally, a wine they call “Pauillac.” All are good, and some barrels and parcels are less complex. You can kill two birds with one stone, elevate your “Prestige” wine and offer a slightly less complex wine for less money or create something just as good but different.
To get the wine in the bottle, you first must homogenize all the components into one cohesive unit. But there are still more decisions to make before bottling.
The use of sulfur and how much to use can get complicated and controversial. There is a misguided movement to reduce added sulfur to ridiculously low levels. But you can’t make wine “stable” without a reasonable level. Wine without sulfur is a crapshoot. The slightest residual sugar can spontaneously referment, bottles explode, cork pop, or if it gets here in one piece, it’s fizzy. Winemakers compensate for reducing sulfur by increasing the inert gas they add at bottling, and it’s the wrong approach.
It’s table wine, and it shouldn’t be petulant. Decanting a “still wine” to air is okay, but de-gassing one is nonsense. I’ve opened many a bottle, and it’s bubbling like a Coke! Then you must put your hand over the top, shake the hell out of it, release your grip, and hear the POP! It can take several tries to get rid of all the gas. That’s not great for table service, nor is it sensible. And it reduces the aging potential.
Next, what closure will you use? Natural cork (my choice), composite cork (crushed cork glued together), synthetic cork, or a “screw-cap.” Each kind of closure has benefits and problems. I’m a traditionalist. I will always choose a traditional good-quality cork. I know how it performs, and I’m happy to accept the minuscule failure rate. It’s part of the game.
This week’s star is a “Real Eye Opener.”
If you want to see just how far Virginia wines have come, look no further. The Washington Posts Dave McIntyre proclaimed: the 2020 Chatham Vineyards Church Creek Chardonnay ‘Steel’, “a great value” and “…an outstanding Virginia Chardonnay that’s worth seeking out.” And Dave got it right!
Here is a Chardonnay that kicks butt, a game-changer! And it’s from VIRGINIA! Be proud, people! Support your state.
This wine floored me. And it is nothing like any California Chardonnay anywhere near its price! It is the spitting image of a Village-level Chablis, dry, with excellent palate-cleansing acidity, delicious lemon butter and sea-shell flavors, and a stone-dust mineral finish. Try finding anything this good from anywhere in the U.S. at its price of $22.99. You can’t!
Hat’s off to Jon and Mills Wehner for making such an outstanding and affordable Chardonnay. Jump on this one — the wine disappeared after the Washington Post review hit. Jon was kind enough to save me his last 30 cases, as we had supported it long before the Washington Post discovered it.
Cheers,
Doug
Photo (top) by Elisha Terada on Unsplash
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
I’m trying not to bore you by getting too technical. But it is critical to your enjoyment of wine to understand how straightforward yet complicated wine-making is.
Something to keep in mind: remember, in grade school, the three reading groups? Accelerated, on-par, and the group needing extra encouragement and or attention? Let’s say you were born in the Village of Pommard. Of its 300 souls, the vast majority have something to do with the wine trade. If you are lucky enough to be landed and the offspring of a wine-producing family, guess what you will do as a career?
Now go back to my grade school reading group illustration and think about it. Wine-making is one of the world’s most complex occupations, and if “Jean-Claude” isn’t in the accelerated reading group, Mom and Dad may start to worry. They might decide to sell the Domaine. But there goes the “family legacy.” A legacy can be a burden.
Now back to decisions that must be made, often on the fly and under duress. The growing season determines everything. First, do you inoculate with a select strain of laboratory-cultivated yeast (a sure thing, but it imparts a “flavor profile”) or use the indigenous yeast from your vineyard?
If you work organically or biodynamically, you have been cultivating your native yeast population to the point that it should be healthy enough to carry the fermentation to complete dryness. But there are no guarantees. I think native yeast is more transparent and yields a more complex wine. If you bottle and have unresolved sugar, the wine could become “sparkling wine,” or the bottles might explode!
The all-important maceration time with juice on the grape skins isn’t something you can look up on Wikipedia. You have to make the call: too much extraction and the wine is coarse, too little, and it’s wimpy. So you want to pull the wine off and press at the sweet spot. Then off to your barrels.
New wood is expensive, as much as $1,200 or more per barrel. Most of my folks are at a 20-33% rotation, meaning you replace that percentage of your barrels yearly. And not all barrels are the same. The forest dictates the kind of oak, the tightness of the grain, the porosity, and the actual “flavor” profile. You can even request a certain toasting level or degree of internal char. Decisions, decisions.
Most winemakers experiment with anywhere from two to five or more barrel makers until they are satisfied with the mix and the results. And you better be friendly with your barrel maker or broker, or you could end up with the barrels that were going to go to Outer Mongolia.
Once the wine is in the barrel, you monitor its progress through alcohol (we are talking about a fine wine here) and then malolactic fermentation. I will explain the difference at a latter-date.
So let’s see, you have many barrels in the cellar, 200? Guess what you will be doing? Tasting, topping off every barrel regularly, and being vigilant. You watch every barrel like a hawk, tasting, smelling, and testing for and fixing any problems.
Wine of the week, you asked for an Autumnal suggestion, and boy, do I have a delicious one.
- 2021 Domaine Serol Eclat de Granite Côte Roannaise — $24.99
I adore this wine, and it will surely be on my Thanksgiving Table! With 1/2 hour of air, Eclat exhibits a super-sexy silkiness. Its 100 Gamay is an absolute joy to drink. It pumps out ultra-pure flavors of raspberries, strawberries, and mineral spice with a long palate cleansing finish. It’s brilliant!
Cheers,
Doug
Photo (top) by Vince Veras on Unsplash
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
So you want to make wine?
So you think you want to make wine?
What were you think’n? It’s 4 a.m., time to get to work. So you spent a month checking your parcels, monitoring ripeness by tasting berries to select or the perfect moment to harvest. A sudden forecast of rain sends shivers up your spine, sending you into over-drive to pick as fast as you can if you find people crazy enough to join you.
Armed with shears, working in oppressive heat, roasting under the hot sun, you carefully select only the ripest bunches as you swat mosquitoes; bees buzz swirling around you, only to land on the bunch you are about to grasp. You must continuously bend, stretch, and contort yourself while gently tossing a season’s worth of work into plastic bins. You schlep the countless plastic containers full of fruit while some escaping juice runs down your legs as you run to the receiving truck.
Alley up, throw them up to the unlucky harvester who must have pissed someone off to get stuck on the truck all day long in the scorching sun, humping plastic lugs full of grapes, bees, and what have you. Back and forth until your arms numb, and it’s just 9 a.m. Thank G-d it’s 9 a.m.
Time to stop for “casse-croute” or the French version of a “coffee break in the vineyard.” Bread, cheese, salami or pâte, and of course, a little liquid sustenance, i.e., wine. Just like the office. A quick snackeroo, and back you go!
The fruit arrives at the winery. So you undo what you just did. Thankfully you are after twenty or so bee stings; you hardly feel them. But at least you are given a cot to sleep on in an unairconditioned barn, attic, or old kitchen with 20 strangers. But the food is good, and there’s plenty of wine.
Time for “triage” or sorting the fruit either by hand or with a fancy vibrating table that does it for you. The aim is to remove any malformed, damaged, or unhealthy clusters, even down to individual berries, along with any leaves, bugs, and the occasional cigarette butts.
Many growers refrigerate the fruit for 8 to 12 before fermentation to preserve freshness. Then off to the de-stemmer, where the bunches are relieved of their berries. So from here on, we are talking about the fermentation of red wine.
Decision number one, do you destem, all or partially or entirely? Under-ripe or vintages with less than perfect fruit are usually wholly destemmed — no need for unripe raspy green stem tannins. If the stems are mature, fermenting a portion of “whole clusters” is an option. Adding stems brings complexity, but be careful of the proportion you use. Stems are also a source of tannins.
The crushed grapes, juice, and skins head into a vessel of the winemaker’s choosing (I’ll talk more about this next week) to settle and macerate. The temperature can be controlled by using refrigeration. Cold retards the yeast activity. You don’t want the juice to ferment straight away. This maceration also has the benefit of reducing the sulfur needed to keep the demons away.
The time that the skins are in contact with the juice is critical. Think of making tea; the more you seep, the more color and tannin you extract. Healthy, clean skins allow for extended mingling in juice with great benefits. The skins are the aromatic heart and soul of the wine.
Everything comes from the skins (in reds.) The winemaker decides when the “right” level of extraction has taken place, and then it’s off to the races — more about that next time. If I’m “nerding out,” please tell me!
Cheers,
Doug
Photo by Thomas Schaefer on Unsplash
This column is written by the team at Arrowine & Cheese (4508 Cherry Hill Road). Sign up for the email newsletter and receive exclusive discounts and offers. Order from Arrowine’s expanding online store for curbside pickup or in-store shopping. Have a question? Email thenose@
What if, during your life, you could only practice your chosen profession 45 times? Well, that’s winemaking! Think about it: 45 times, that’s it. And you have to get it right each time, no matter the circumstances. Mother Nature is rarely consistent, perhaps never. Every year a winemaker has to make an enormous amount of decisions based on what the vintage gives them to work with.
Let me explain: we discussed the notion of “terroir” before. A “successful” wine must transfer or speak of the place it is from; that’s the whole enchilada, nothing less, or why drink wine in the first place?
We choose a particular varietal, a Pinot Noir or Sauvignon Blanc, from a “specific place” with an expectation of what it will taste like and how it will work with a particular food or moment. But how do we form these expectations?
The winemaker’s job is to seamlessly get the land’s soul into the bottle without screwing it up. And, to capture not just the particular varietal or blend but to bottle “the vintage,” to pleasantly give you the flavors or expression of that particular growing season, that is the Art, my friends! And great winemakers embrace this challenge.
They know they are working with a product that doesn’t lend itself well to intervention, manipulation, or strongarm tactics. As a winemaker, you listen to the grapes, they don’t listen to you. No matter what you could do to change the nature of the fruit (technology today allows for this, lipstick on a pig), a cosmetic. Trying to change the soul of the wine is a fool’s errand.
I took 25 clients on a river cruise five years ago. I planned each visit, and when I sat back and looked at each winemaker I selected to visit, women ran 80% of them! Some of you might disagree, but I believe women are better suited for making wine. Women seem to approach winemaking from a more cerebral, nurturing perspective. They are more apt to deal with the realities of the vintage, to let the vintage speak, allowing the wine to be what it is intrinsically, and not forcing it to do or taste as they “think” it should. Perhaps it has something to do with maternal instincts. I’m not a psychologist, so I can only guess.
Now for the nitty-gritty, decisions, decisions. It all starts with picking the harvest date. The hard and fast rule is harvest takes place 100 days after flowering. But it’s not that easy; here’s why; when I started in this business 45-plus years ago, “Brix” were everything. People harvest according to the sugar content of the fruit. Winemakers squished a grape, placed the juice on a refractometer, and read the sugar content of the juice. That told you the potential alcohol level, and when you hit “your number,” you picked. Today winemakers get more up-close and personal. They go into the vineyards weeks before the harvest and observe.
They examine the stalks. Are they ripe, woody (overripe), shriveled, or green and healthy? Then they look at the all-important skins (healthy mature skins are everything in making red wine, especially). Grape skins are the primary source of tannins, allowing the wine to age gracefully. The all-important skins also contain phenols or compounds that enable the wine to develop complex aromas. Are the skins ripe and not bitter when you bite into them? Are they fragile, easily broken, damaged, or sunburned?
Then comes tasting the entire berry, not just for sweetness but maturity; the skins, the flesh, and the pips. Then you are ready to go, or maybe not? More on that next week!
Cheers,
Doug
