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pork never goes bad posted:We started with 2010 Unti Cuvee Blanc... It's made up of 48% Grenache Blanc, 45% Vermentino, and 7% Picpoul, and we both liked this very much. It's so loving good. Bracing acidity, and bright fruit. This went down very easily. Unti is in Napa Valley, but the style of wine is very different to the norm for the area. The varieties used in the blend are characteristic of the Mediterranean, particularly southern France. This is the only white wine Unti makes. Does anybody know of varietal Picpoul or Vermentino wine? Unti is in Dry Creek. If you liked the Cuvee Blanc you should try the Madame Preston from Preston Winery which is almost directly across Dry Creek from Unti. It is similarly Grenache Blanc based, though the rest is Viognier, Marsanne, and Roussanne. Preston also occasionally does varietal bottlings of the components. For Picpoul and Vermintino check out Tablas Creek (http://tablascreek.com/picpoul10.shtml) & (http://tablascreek.com/vermentino10.shtml.) You'll have more luck around Paso Robles in general. Also you can get varietal Picpoul from Langueduc for cheap if you look around. Here's one for $7 http://www.amitywines.com/vsku1316982.html
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Nov 16, 2011 01:42
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4liters posted:http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/penfolds-releases-1000-bottle-of-red/story-e6frf7jx-1226196883322 I was in the Australia in '08. There was plenty of sugar to hit 16.5% and still leave 20g/L.
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Nov 19, 2011 18:25
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ballgameover.mp3 posted:Hey, I'm trying to find a thread about making your own wine. I haven't found one, does such a thread exist? You may be in the right place, on what scale are you talking about making wine? Several of us make wine for a living, but in the last thread a few people asked some home winemaking questions and got rather technical answers.
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Nov 21, 2011 22:24
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When I was an undergrad my friends and I got into home winemaking and the best advise I can give you is to stop posting on the internet for an hour and put some yeast in something sweet. We read "The Alaskan Bootleggers Bible" and made all kinds of poo poo. Most of it was awful, but it got us ripped. We eventually made some stuff that was pretty decent. Here's what you need to know: Step 1: Get a clean bucket, really clean not just rinsed. Step 2: Get a decent inoculum going and add it to some kind of sweet liquid. Step 3: Wait. Step 4: Bottle. Step 5: Drink. Keep good notes so you know what you did, you know, in case you ever want to do it again. Don't think too much about it, blend up a few pounds of of strawberries and see how they go. Next time slice the strawberries and see how the results compare. *edit: Changed link to amazon if you want to buy the book. Stitecin fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Nov 25, 2011 |
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Nov 24, 2011 05:39
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Sorry about that, I bought the book at my local homebrew store. I have no idea if it's free anywhere. Seriously add some strawberries to some sugar water and ferment it. If it lacks strawberry character make another batch with more strawberries. If a batch turns to poo poo you're out what, $25? Also the only reason I recommend that book is it urges you not to fuss too much and just start making something. It really shouldn't turn into another thing to obsess over. Stitecin fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Nov 25, 2011 |
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Nov 25, 2011 04:50
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4liters posted:Whats that oval office Parker up to these days? I think he's only reviewing back vintages and the Rhone or something, but this video was posted all over facebook after the announcement was made. The Tweeting Assistant made me laugh.
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Dec 8, 2011 04:10
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Mister Macys posted:Just out of curiousity, how are unoaked wines, in comparison with their oak-aged brethren? The best way to understand the difference is to taste the difference. Try to find a shop that sells Torbreck. The Steading and and Cuvee Juveniles are blends made from the same vineyards in really similar proportions with the Steading seeing oak, and Juveniles only stainless.
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Dec 23, 2011 21:15
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Plastic Jesus posted:I assume that the $8 plastic corkers and $22 capper-looking corkers are wastes of money, yes? I worked in a "Make Your Own Wine" shop between my first and second vintages, and I made a lot of wine in my dorm room. At the shop we had the kind of floor stand corker that has four brass bits to compress the cork before the pin comes down and pushes it into the bottle; the same type we use for corking small batches at the winery. They're much better. In the dorms I had one of the $8 plastic double funnel corkers, and it worked ok after I got to the point that I would drive the corks in with a rubber mallet. As important as bottling sanitation and proper cork seating are, you should also consider how you'll inert the bottles before you fill them. It sucks to look forward to a bottle and open it to find it's been destroyed by oxidation.
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Jan 3, 2012 01:57
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Bleston Humenthal posted:Quick question. 2007 Chateau Chauvin. Decant or no? Wouldn't hurt. At least open a couple hours before you're going to drink it.
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Jan 8, 2012 19:44
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Lolcano Eruption posted:How acceptable is it to store unopened wine in the refrigerator? Not long-term storage but keeping a couple of bottles for a week or two. I could use general advice but the wines in question are white; more specifically Chardonnay and Riesling. They'll be fine. The worst thing that will happen is that they'll throw some tartrate crystals or look hazy, and that's only going to happen if you've got wines from producers that don't cold stabilize.
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Feb 13, 2012 06:55
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Tekne posted:Purchased a '09 Dom des Hautes Noelle Muscadet today at BevMo!. I'll try it with some seafood later this week. Looking forward to that promised minerality. Just a quick look, but I'd probably buy at least one of these. http://www.wineaccess.com/store/primavini/ecommerce/product.html?product_id=11311435 http://www.wineaccess.com/store/primavini/ecommerce/product.html?product_id=11264216 http://www.wineaccess.com/store/primavini/ecommerce/product.html?product_id=11276623
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Feb 23, 2012 03:00
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Cpt Underpants posted:I'm a big fan of a local winery here in South Australia called Temple Bruer. They makes some really amazing stuff completely preservative free. No sulfur dioxide, organic certified and vegan friendly. No they're not. Ok, vegan friendly maybe, but strictly vegan no. Not unless vegans can drink earwigs.
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Jun 20, 2012 02:33
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Hand picked fruit is definitely cleaner, but even hand picked, cluster sorted, destemmed, berry sorted must contains a fair percentage of bugs. I've always wondered if anyone had ever studied the effects of bug-derived nutrients on fermentation.
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Jun 20, 2012 07:59
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4liters posted:I imagine if you freeze one solid with dry ice then crush it up in a mortar and pestle you could run it through the same YAN analysis as the must. That's a great idea. The next question would be how the nitrogen becomes available relative to alcohol content. I'm also curious about effects on protein stability. I've always thought the hard part of any real world trials would be getting a sans insectes control.
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Jun 21, 2012 07:01
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4liters posted:This would take care of the bugs I'd imagine: Those things are amazing, I've never used one but I would really like to see one in person. Honestly we have a shaker table that is a lot like the one they're using before the Collopack and very few bugs make it past even that. It works a lot better when you don't let the channels fill up with stems though. Stitecin fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jun 22, 2012 |
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Jun 22, 2012 06:40
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WanderingMinstrel I posted:One last question, which level of oenophile hell will I be sent to if I just pack wine in my suitcase for the return trip? I have checked wine on flights from Australia, France, and New Zealand without seeing any loss of quality. I would be more worried about it in the trunk of your car to and from the airport. Stitecin fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jul 21, 2012 |
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Jul 20, 2012 22:43
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FreelanceSocialist posted:If relatively short trips in the trunk of your car, even in soaring heat waves, worries you, I probably shouldn't tell you what happens in transit from the distributor to retail. Don't worry about it being in your car for a bit. Yeah, I meant that as a joke to illustrate how safe checked wine is. It does kind of piss me off to think about how much time I spend doing poo poo like insulating the supply lines to the bottling truck when I know that some distributor's asswipe truck driver is going to let wine cook in the back of his truck while he stops for a smoke-break.
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Jul 21, 2012 03:45
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moflika posted:...I'm planning on just heading over to France around end August with some broken French and a dictionary, but would obviously prefer to organize something beforehand. First buy The Winemaker's Essential Phrasebook at least then you'll know winemaking vocabulary to go with your broken French (Portuguese, Italian, German, & Spanish). Then check out the group "Travelling Winemakers - Living the dream!!" on Facebook and Harvest Intern. There should be a couple leads at least.
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Aug 3, 2012 05:26
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4/20 NEVER FORGET posted:I'm in Healdsburg on vacation. I'm more excited to go drink beer than go tasting at wineries. Did Bear Republic yesterday and going to hit Russian River Brewing today. Go to the Dry Creek General store, and eat dinner at Scopa. Those are my two favorite things in Healdsburg. If you want to eat at Cyrus you better do it this trip, they're closing up soon. Aleworks isn't far from Russian River. It's also not great, but neither is Bear Republic and you went there. If you want to taste in Dry Creek without getting buried in Zin go up West Dry Creek Road and hit up Quivira and Preston. Stitecin fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Aug 14, 2012 |
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Aug 14, 2012 02:30
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Stitecin posted:Aleworks isn't far from Russian River. It's also not great, but neither is Bear Republic and you went there. I had a couple bad experiences there in 2007, I can't say how it is now. The beers vary from mediocre to good, the food and service are worse. Overall it's not great. 
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Aug 16, 2012 05:09
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Dear SA Wine Sophisticates, Last March, after four vintages in the cellar, I was promoted to Assistant Winemaker. I haven't mentioned it because A: I don't make Oregon Pinot so none of you care & B: Well, mostly A. -Stitecin kirtar posted:Is it common or normal for red wine to cause your tongue to turn a fairly dark color? It's normal. It's not everyday but it's also not infrequent that I have to power taste 75 barrels before the cellar crew can start their racking for the day. Tasting 75 Napa Cab barrel samples before 7:30 am will leave your tongue black all day unless you go brush and use a tongue scraper. Mine isn't ivory, but it works well. If you're going to have a lot of wine (or other low pH liquid) in your mouth you should look into MI Paste. My dentist sees a ton of wine industry folks and this stuff will help prevent winemaker mouth.
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Oct 4, 2012 13:26
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Perfectly Cromulent posted:Congratulations! Where do you make wine? I work at a fairly small privately owned winery in the Russian River Valley. Our production is roughly 50% Napa Cab, 25% RRV Pinot, 24% RRV Chard, 1% (1 fermenter) Bennett Valley Syrah. It's a good gig, and I get to play with fruit from some of the most famous vineyards in California.
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Oct 5, 2012 21:33
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At one of the wineries I've worked harvest we didn't inoculate any of the pinot or chardonnay. The pinot was destemmed, adjusted (brix, yan, pH), cold soaked, warmed, and left to whatever was in the air and whatever came in on the fruit. I thought, and still do, that ec1118 must have been the dominant house strain because it is what they used for all of their cabernet the year(s?) before. Another strain came in about half way through vintage with a completely different fermentation kinetic. With identical treatment the ferments began racing and the caps went from high and dry to foamy and soft. The chard was whole cluster pressed, settled for 24 hours, adjusted (brix, yan, pH), barreled down and left to whatever came in on the fruit. The used barrels were steamed and ozoned, so wouldn't have had much viable yeast. There were significant differences between the fermentation kinetics of different lots, but no significant differences between the new and used barrels within each lot. In my experience there's no reason not to try it, if you run a clean winery and stay on top of your ferments.
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Nov 10, 2012 05:00
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that Vai sound posted:What's the best way of drinking wine alone, and in limited quantities? Like if I wanted to have one glass a day from the same bottle, what's the best way of preserving its freshness? I came across a nitro tap system, which seems like the sort of setup I'm looking for, but I have no idea how well these things work. You want a Coravin. We just tasted a trial of a bottle we poured a glass out of 6 months ago, and it was almost indestructible from the control. (They're $300 though.)
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Oct 24, 2013 04:59
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Kasumeat posted:High alcohol wines like CDP will erode the cork. It's fine. Speaking of which, does anyone here own port tongs? I have no reason to buy a set, but that's never stopped me before. That'll be the push I need to start buying (and drinking) old Port.
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Nov 11, 2013 07:28
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gay picnic defence posted:You don't need to use them on port, you can open any Fixed. I'm going to start breaking the screw-caps off of Vinho Verde and Beaujolais Nouveau. Fake Edit: Serious question; do any of the Goon Somm Army ever actually use one?
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Nov 12, 2013 03:26
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I'm not sure how a butler would get away with having snapped the top 1/8 off of a bottle to get around an old stuck cork that would crumble if he tried to pull it with a cork screw. I'm talking about using one of these: 
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Nov 12, 2013 23:26
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crazyfish posted:edit 2: I'm also interested in "weirder" wines; things like spontaneous fermentation/wild yeast wines, etc, not just orange. I drink a lot of spontaneous fermentation beer so I'd like to see how that extends to the world of wine. Check out Idlewild Wines, and Ryme Cellars. Both are owned by young couples with solid winemaking backgrounds and knowledge, so the wines aren't VA traps or full of brett, but are made using the "weirder" techniques you're looking for. From the Idlewild website: 
Stitecin fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 19:55
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surf animal posted:Goldeneye is a sister label to Duckhorn, I've seen it retail from $45-$65 around local shops/grocery stores. Goldeneye's second label is Migration. Duckhorn is under the same ownership umbrella as Goldeneye, Decoy, and Paraduxx but they all have different focus varieties and/or are in different AVA's so there's not really a first second third type relationship between them.
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Dec 4, 2013 01:33
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I'd second Principles and Practices of Winemaking if he's studying enology. It's a lot more useful than "Wine Grapes: A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties".
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Jan 7, 2014 17:15
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Kasumeat posted:No, that isn't true at all. Most Californian wines have residual sugar of 5-6g/L, with higher being extremely common, compared to the rarely-met maximum of 4g/L by most dry red wines in France, or as low as 2g/L in many prestigious appellations. What are you basing this on? I don't mean to be argumentative, but am genuinely curious if you have a source for this. (Fake edit): rs isn't required to be disclosed nor is it legally defined, so label text or product text sheets are not good sources. I would be surprised if enough wineries in either country are even reporting rs numbers to make such a sweeping generalization.
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Mar 22, 2014 07:42
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Kasumeat posted:I never claimed to be making anything but a generalisation. I get it, California is more than Gallo and co., and yes I'm sure your buddy is making some genuinely delicious Tocai Friulano orange wine, but that doesn't change the fact that the vast, vast, vast majority of California wines, including pinot, have > 2g/L residual sugar. If you'd made the generalization that a majority of Cali wine is > 2 g/l I would have let it slide but you said 5-6 g/l and from either an organoleptic or wine stability standpoint those are very different levels. California is a big place, so's Europe, I'm guessing it wouldn't be hard to find a wine at any rs or abv you want from either place, but like Overwined got carried away saying you need your pallet to decide whether you like them. The same is true for pH, TA, new oak %, critic score, or whatever.
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Mar 25, 2014 03:36
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Kasumeat posted:... Again, here is some data to back up my claim; in alphabetical order, the California pinots carried by the largest purchaser of wine in the world... The r/s in the first 10 wines from the South of France on that website averages 8.4 g/l. I'm not going to look at this any more, because I don't care, but I do think that the average r/s in all CA wine is probably a bit higher, but not by 3 g/l.
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Mar 25, 2014 05:44
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GLUFRU posted:For what it's worth, I don't think the RS numbers from that website are accurate... Here go the California winemakers showing their California biases again. I also work in production and the numbers on that site are about +3 g/l for our wines, but the discussion (pissing contest) was about comparing California and old world not Ontario's lab accuracy.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:14
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spinst posted:Any other recommendations for Mourvedres? Kermit Lynch imports Domaine de la Tour du Bon and it's fantastic, my wife and I tasted there a couple years ago at the recommendation of the tasting room woman at Domaine Tempier. The winemaker summed up good Mourvèdre perfectly, she said that it is like a Gothic cathedral, there is a lot of space but it's not empty. There should be fruit, earth, and venison blood. It's my favorite grape.
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Jun 10, 2014 04:45
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himajinga posted:... I opened a bottle... About 10 minutes later...(it was bad) Thoughts as to why it almost immediately went dull? Probably a stupid question, but did you eat anything during those 10 minutes?
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Jun 13, 2014 23:42
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Sometimes non-wine teaching aids go a long way for teaching. Steep some black tea overnight for some tannin (or have them lick a banana peel), add a bit of decent vodka to neutral white wine in steps to demonstrate the effect of increased EtOH, find a bland red and infuse some spices. I can also recommend the faults kit Enartis Vinquiry sells. I bought one for training with my cellar crew a couple years ago. They probably can't tell the difference between TCA & TBA but they know if they smell either one to bring me a sample asap.
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Oct 28, 2014 04:15
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The annual  Thanksgiving wine tips rush should keep this thread on the first page of GWS for the next week.Does anyone have any particularly hot tips to offer beyond "buy a lot of Beaujolais"?
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Nov 21, 2014 20:19
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Zeno-25 posted:I guess you could get a Beaujolais Nouveau if you're buying for people that don't like good wine... Ok now I feel like I have to defend myself. In what world does Beaujolais not imply Cru Beaujolais? No one who cares the least bit about wine should hear Beaujolais and think Nouveau.
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Nov 23, 2014 10:31
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Crimson posted:Hitting up Paso Robles for the next few days. Anyone been there and know any smaller gems? I've already got Halter Ranch, Ambyth and Tablas Creek down. The Ambyth wines are outrageously tasty by the way. That Grenache would make for some good Thanksgiving drinking. I liked Villa Creek and Adelaida. It's an hour and a half from Paso but Demetria in Santa Ynez is also great.
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Nov 23, 2014 22:52
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