Archive for the 'Winemaking' Category

I’ve drunk wines over a century old. I’ve drunk wines aged in 50-year-old casks. I’ve drunk wines aged in barrels whose stave wood had been aged for four years before a cooper assembled it into barrels.

But until the holidays I had never knowingly drunk a wine aged in a barrel made from an oak tree more than 300 years old. On top of that, the oak tree had been planted under orders of Louis XIV of France at his over-the-top country place, Versailles.

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I’ve long harbored the fantasy, nightmare really, that a computerized wine tasting device would be created that could chemically analyze wine for aroma, flavor and finish as well as, and probably better than, any wine writer or master sommelier.

Never got to use the idea in a magazine article, but that’s the beauty of a blog. You can make it up if you want to. I pictured the illustration that would go with it. Kind of a 1960s style computer, with a large aluminum funnel poking out the top, great wheels of tape spinning on the front, and a long ribbon of yellow paper punched with the results streaming from a slot in one side.

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During a short stay in the Piemonte (Piedmont) wine region I met proponents of opposite sides of the ongoing debate over the use of small oak barrels for making Barolo, Barbaresco and the region’s other red wines. It’s a bit hard to believe that this philosophical battle continues after a generation, but it only shows how passionate Piemontese winemakers and connoisseurs are about the subject.

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Yesterday I moderated a panel discussion on red wine fermentation at the Napa Grape + Wine Expo, and got to pump two of the valley’s, maybe the world’s, most accomplished winemakers. With my questions, and a lot more from an audience of mostly younger winemakers and other industry folk, the winemakers revealed a lot about their philosophies of winemaking and actual techniques and practices.

Celia Masyczek makes wine for nine Napa Valley clients, and was the Staglin Family winemaker for about 10 years. Bob Levy heads winemaking for Harlan Estate, Bond and The Napa Valley Reserve.

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The fun of making wine every year on a small scale comes in part from the the thrill of the hunt. My partner in home winemaking crime, Bill, and I don’t have our own vineyard to pick, so instead we go hunting, or more like scavenging, for good fruit for which nobody else has spoken.

More than half of the time we score completely free grapes, believe it or not. In Napa Valley, where farmland can cost $250,000 or more per acre, and wine grapes sell at an average price of over $3,000 a ton, we often get lucky enough to pay zero.

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